The Cave
by gaelicspirit
Summary: Set during S11, after Baby and before Thin Lizzy. Trapped and wounded, only one thing will save the Winchesters from the horror that waits in the cave: their bond as brothers. Too bad they can't remember who they are.
1. Who Are You?

**Title:** The Cave  
 **Fandom:** Supernatural  
 **Author** : gaelicspirit  
 **Rating** : PG-13 – for many bad words and some gore  
 **Characters:** Dean, Sam - GEN

 **Disclaimer/Warning:** They're not mine. More's the pity. Ironically, title does _not_ come from Mumford  & Sons song of the same name. Even though that's totally something I would do. But the chapter titles are classic rock songs. Because why not? Oh, and the cave monster? Pure fiction. I think. Cover art is thanks to **Thru Terrys Eyes**.

 **Author's Note:** It's been 84 years….

Just kidding. But, it _has_ been a while since I wrote an original Supernatural story (i.e., not a tag or missing scene built off of an episode where I just needed a little bit _more_ ). I've been hanging out quite happily in the world of the gorgeous, swashbuckling brotherhood of _The Musketeers_ and lurking on Hell's Kitchen's rooftops with _Daredevil_ 's blind vigilante lawyer. I won't be leaving those troves of storytelling inspiration any time soon, but….

A little over a year ago, I had an idea for the Winchester brothers (around the time Dean was de-demonized in S10), and after some ridiculous insomnia and endless months of familial angst, I started chewing on this idea. Honestly, it's really just a story, nothing more than a way to remember all the reasons they are who they are—a flashback episode, if you will—and an excuse for some angst and h/c Winchester style.

I am a little rusty, and I know you have plenty of other places to go to get your h/c fixes, you resourceful things, but I'm offering this to you anyway, warts and all. It was written for pure entertainment purposes, so if you read, I hope you enjoy.

* * *

 **The Vespertilio Caverns** _,_ **somewhere under the Appalachian Mountains**

He was falling.

His body jerked to a harsh, sudden stop, his arm tethered to something above him. Pain ripped through him like lightning, coursing down his side with claws of agony, tearing at muscle and breaking bone.

He was screaming before he was truly aware of anything beyond the pain, blinking through a haze of torment as the sound seemed to echo around him, bouncing off of the darkness itself and crashing back against him like a surgical strike. Something hard and cold tore into the skin on his wrist and he jerked his body in reflexive resistance.

"Hey! Hey, hold up! Quit moving!"

The voice was breathless, strained, and coming from above him. Instinctively he bit down on his lip to silence the endless scream that yearned to press forward. Seconds after the disembodied voice pleaded for him to hold still, he felt fingers grappling for his, the sharp sting at his wrist spiking for a moment as another hand twisted for a grip. His fingers felt stiff and numb, heat lightning shooting up through his wrist and into his shoulder as the grip tightened.

"Okay, I gotcha," the voice panted. "Reach up. Your other hand, reach up."

The pain along his side burned through him; he didn't think he could breathe let alone lift his other arm. He couldn't see anything around him; it was dark enough he might believe he'd been struck blind. He tried to look down and his forehead hit a rocky surface directly in front of him.

He was hanging from his right arm, nothing below him, rock in front of him.

And he was freezing.

 _What the actual hell?_

"Hey, buddy, c'mon." The voice was strained even more now. "Don't…don't know how much longer…my arm can take this."

He reached up, directly above his own head, and miraculously felt the back of another reaching hand. Grasping the other man at the wrist, he bit his lip, swallowing a bleat of misery as his body was pulled upwards, his chest scraping against the rock, the pain in his right arm and down his side intensifying. As his upper body cleared a flat surface, he felt an abbreviated _pop_ in his shoulder and an involuntary cry slipped free, the sound once again reverberating around him.

"Almost there," assured the voice, and he suddenly felt a long arm wrap around his back, gathering him close and tugging him up and over the edge.

His face was mashed into the broad shoulder of the other man, the musky scent of sweat and dirt and something that smelled oddly like ashes filling his senses. He felt his knees hit the ledge and rolled against the man to bring himself safely to solid ground. For a moment, they lay still, tangled and spent, gasping for air.

It wasn't until then that he registered he was soaking wet. The realization itself seemed to exaggerate the chill in the air; he could feel his body shaking in a detached way, as though all of this was happening to someone else. He started to push himself upright, but stopped the instant he put weight on his wounded arm—which seemed to be attached to his rescuer—the pain spiking once more.

"Hang on," the other man pleaded.

It took a moment of awkward shifting, but they managed to sit up, more or less facing each other, his right arm stretched slightly forward where it was tethered to the taller man.

"I'm wet," he said, his voice low and rough, shredded from the scream. It sounded both foreign and familiar to his ears. "What the hell?"

"Just…just, _Jesus_. Take it easy," his rescuer entreated.

He _really_ wished he could see his companion. See _something_.

"I'm wet, too," the guy continued. "Well, part of me is anyway."

"Where the hell are we?"

His head was pounding; the sound of his chattering teeth intensifying the ache. Reaching up with his free hand, he gingerly pressed against his forehead and cheek, testing the stinging spots and feeling the scuff of abraded skin. His fingers came away wet, but he had no idea if it was water or blood.

"Dunno…'s big, though. Sounds big anyway," his rescuer replied, panting slightly as though from pain.

He figured if his arm was on fire, the other guy had to be in pretty bad shape as well. Then he heard the man cry out and his heart rate spiked.

"What's wrong?"

"Keep…keep seeing… _gah_ …."

He frowned, the motion pulling at the wounds on his face. "Seeing? I can't see shit in here."

"Not…not _seeing_ …'s like…images," the other guy swallowed hard, the gulp audible, "of a horror movie or something."

Curling slightly forward, trying to relieve the pressure sitting upright put on his damaged muscles, he took a shallow breath and immediately regretted it. Now that he was on solid ground, he could pick up on the smell. It was a sickening, over-ripe, rancid smell, like…rotting corpse.

Many of them.

"You maybe got a light?" he rasped, trying not to let the panic take over.

He felt the other man twist around and stifled a curse as pain once again rippled through him in chilling waves. It seemed pretty clear that his wrist had broken in the fall, and he wasn't positive, but his shoulder felt stretched, swollen, and hot—like it had been pulled from the socket. He stifled the urge to jerk back in protest when it suddenly became clear what his rescuer was doing.

The light from a cell phone flashlight illuminated the space around them and immediately glinted off the material binding the two men together. He blinked in the glow, eyes closing automatically in reaction to the sudden brilliance, then refocused on their wrists and frowned.

Handcuffs.

Both of their wrists were torn and bleeding where the cuffs had ripped into their skin from the force of his fall. He could feel blood soaking into the sleeve of his wet shirt and saw it staining the edge of his companion's jacket.

Cautiously, he looked up at his rescuer's face. The moment he did so, however, the other man gasped and jerked away.

"Shit," the guy choked out.

The movement pulled sharply at their linked arms and he cried out, closing his eyes once more, genuinely afraid he was about to be sick right here in the dark.

"Sorry, but…sh-shit," his rescuer repeated.

"Just…quit moving for a second," he pleaded weakly, opening his eyes once more and taking in the man across from him.

Longer hair framed a wide face with a slightly upturned nose, cat-like hazel eyes, and a generous mouth with lips pressed tightly together. A day or two's growth of beard shadowed a strong jaw, brows furrowed close over the bridge of his nose. He'd hoped that when he saw the man's face, he'd have at least a _sense_ of recognition, but he'd never seen this man before in his life.

"Do you know me?" he asked, trying to cradle his wrist.

"I-, uh…," the long-haired man started, then swallowed loudly. He really hoped the guy wasn't going to be sick; he seriously wouldn't be far behind at this stage. "I think, maybe?"

More disconcerting than not recognizing the man who'd saved him was the look of terror that had found a home in that man's eyes as they stared back through the bluish glow of the cellphone light.

"I…can't tell what's actually…y'know, real or…." Long Hair rubbed at his face, looking decidedly rattled.

"Any idea why we're wet?" He rotated his neck, trying to find some relief from the ache that seemed intent on stealing his breath.

"You're not more concerned about us being handcuffed?" Long Hair returned.

He frowned, instantly irritated. "No, frankly, I'm more concerned about the fact I can't seem to remember my own fucking name."

He breathed shallowly; he'd been so intent on the pain, the fact that he didn't instantly know who he was hit him only now. As he searched for something— _anything_ —to explain how he'd ended up inside what was apparently a cave, hanging off the edge of cliff from a pair of handcuffs, the sensation of tumbling into a bottomless abyss sent a swooping feeling of dizziness through him.

"You don't…you don't remember your name?" Long Hair asked.

Shaking his head, he asked, "You?"

Long Hair shook his head slowly in response, fear erasing years from the unfamiliar face. A strange feeling of protection seemed to shift within him at that. Holding his wounded arm close, he looked up and around at the blackness surrounding them.

"Shine that thing around," he ordered.

Long Hair complied and they took in their environment. It was indeed a cave—a completely enclosed cavern, to be specific—easily a football field in length, with copper-hued stalactites dripping on them from roughly ten feet above their heads. Scattered around them and all over the floor of the cavern were what appeared to be bones—some clean, some with flesh still attached, and some, disturbingly, looked to have remnants of clothing fixed to them.

Next to where they sat was a ledge that ran the length of the cavern. As one, they leaned slightly over and looked down. Roughly six feet from the ledge, on the opposite wall, he could see the ragged mouth-like opening of a large tunnel. Long Hair angled the flashlight downward.

The light did not reach a bottom.

"Holy shit," Long Hair whispered.

"Guess I'm kinda glad for the handcuffs," he said quietly, another shiver wracking his abused muscles as he straightened up. "Looks like those bones account for that god-awful smell."

"Well, yeah, plus all the guano," Long Hair commented, once more shining the cell light around the cavern.

This time he saw large piles of waste, tinged a greenish hue in the light from the cell phone.

"Guano," he repeated, wrinkling his nose in disgust. "From how many freaking bats?"

Instinctively, they simultaneously lifted their eyes along with the light and examined the ceiling of the cavern with trepidation. Other than the dripping rock formations, it seemed bare. No tell-tale movements, no sounds of wings, no chirps or squeaks. Aside from the still-haggard breathing of his companion, there was not another sound within the disturbingly complete darkness.

 _Still as a grave_ , he thought, feeling his heart clench.

"Okay, so…." Long Hair tipped the light down so that it glowed between them and running a hand through chin-length hair.

Trying to be stealthy, he reached up to feel his own hair: close-cropped, thicker on top, plastered to his skull by something with more substance than water. He dragged his hand down his face, careful of the cuts he'd felt earlier, sluicing the liquid from his own beard scruff and looking at his hand in the light of the cell phone. Whatever it was coating his head, it was pink-tinged from blood, and slick, but it definitely wasn't water.

"There's gotta be some reason we're cuffed together," Long Hair continued, frowning suddenly as if in pain, then dropped the cell phone as he reached for his head.

"Dude." He grabbed up the light, momentarily terrified of being encased in darkness once more. "Hey, man, you okay?"

Long Hair shuddered, pressing the heel of his hand against his temple and blinking his eyes wide. The guy's hair wasn't wet, but his left arm and hand—the arm that was trapped by the handcuffs—was soaked as were most of his clothes. The guy shook his head as though to clear it and blinked rapidly back at him.

"Yeah, I just…." Long Hair's swallow was audible in the suffocating silence of the cavern. "Just…r-remembered something."

"Okay." He stretched the word out; even if he didn't know who the hell he was, he was really pretty sure this entire situation defied any semblance of _anyone's_ version of 'normal.' "Care to share with the class?"

"It was just…just a-a flash, like before, but…."

Long Hair looked up at him again and he felt that same swoop, low in his gut like he was falling and this man was his only life-line.

"I saw you. Again."

"So, you _do_ know me."

"Yeah, but," Long Hair looked down at their cuffs. "You were beating the shit outta somebody and you…your eyes were…."

"What?" He suddenly didn't want to hear this. He _knew_ he didn't want to hear this.

"Black. All black. You looked…."

Long Hair frowned again and he knew instinctively he did _not_ like that look.

"I'm pretty sure you killed somebody."

He swallowed, closing his eyes against an especially harsh throb of pain. The way his side stabbed at him when he tried to take a full breath, he was almost certain the fall had cracked a couple ribs. He was also pretty sure that if he didn't stop shivering, he was going to crack a few more.

"Look, we n-need to figure out a way out of h-here," he said, his teeth chattering. "Let's do this b-by the numbers."

Long Hair nodded, accepting that logic. "You got a phone on you?"

He hadn't thought of that.

Patting his front pockets and coming up empty, he slid his legs beneath him, groaning as he raised up on his knees and felt his back pockets. He came up with a pretty impressive lock back knife in his pocket and, _surprise_ , another blade in his boot. Setting the weapons between them, he settled back on his rear, collecting his wounded arm as close as he could to try to stave off the pain while the other guy maneuvered himself similarly, emptying his own pockets.

Long Hair had on a jacket—which he was regrettably lacking—and more pockets to empty, placing a wallet, a blade, a full clip of bullets, though no gun, and a pack of matches on the ground. Watching the pile grow between them, he breathed shallowly until the guy stopped pulling on his arm with his movement.

"Okay, so…," Long Hair started, a play he now recognized as the other man's way to buy time as he thought of the right words, "I have my ID. You do not. So, I figure we need to agree on something."

"That right?" He was starting to feel his trembling increase—not just shivering from the chill of being wet, but shaking from the effects of having his arm nearly torn from its socket. "Lay it on me."

"We're cuffed for a reason," Long Hair started. "Either one of us is a criminal, or we both are."

"Or we're victims of some twisted sex game gone wrong," he offered, needing to wipe the smug look of tactical advantage from the other man's face.

"Either way," the other man replied, obviously refusing to be baited for the moment, "until we figure out how to get out of this cave, I say we agree to work together. No matter what."

"Whatever you say, chief," he exhaled, pain exhausting him.

Long Hair nodded, pressing his lips out again, then reached for his wallet. Seeing the FBI badge on the inside fold was a bit of a shock. Nothing about the guy's canvas jacket and flannel shirt hinted that he was a Fed. The guy angled the ID toward him.

"My name's Sam," Long Hair said. "Sam Banner."

"Nice to meet you," he replied. Although, admittedly, he'd almost gotten used to thinking of his companion as _Long Hair_.

"I am an FBI agent," Banner huffed.

He couldn't help but chuckle inwardly. "Need a little more Keanu to sell that line."

"Huh?"

"Forget it." He shook his head.

"So…I guess you're my prisoner?"

He drew his head up at that. "How do you figure?"

"You're cuffed to my left hand; I'm not left handed." Banner lifted his right shoulder, tipping his hand as if to say, _see_?

"You sure your name's not Inigo Montoya?"

The names seemed to fall from his mouth as though someone were feeding him lines from a script. They connected to nothing concrete, nothing he could lean on and say he knew. He was basically speaking from muscle memory.

Banner continued, warming to his topic. "Plus you add in the memory of you killing someone—"

"Hold up, Banner." No way was he ready to call this guy _Sam_. He tilted his head, eyes leveled on Banner in a way that surprisingly managed to cower the other man. "You got no idea what that…that memory…is of…out of context. Plus, I don't have my ID—and what the hell happened to: we gotta work together no matter what?"

"Right," Banner nodded, hazel eyes narrowed a bit, studying him in a way that seemed to see a bit too much.

He tried desperately not to visibly shiver, but he could feel his body ticking around him.

"We need to get away from this ledge," Banner continued, "find some way to warm up, figure out how to get out of here. In that order."

"Yessir." He intended it to be mocking, but the response felt natural. Instinctive. Just directed at the wrong person.

Banner picked up the cell light and shone it around the cavernous space. For all the room around them, a sense of claustrophobia snuck in; the idea that they were beneath the ground, in the dark, bones scattered around them, the chill of the earth saturating them….

He had to force himself to take a slow, stuttering breath.

"There, see that?" Banner said suddenly.

He looked. Another tunnel, several feet to his right, and on the same level as the ground where they sat. After tracking the light along the stone walls and ceiling, it appeared to be literally the only way in or out of this cavern.

"We had to have come through there," Banner continued. "I say we go back that way, see what we find."

"Works for me," he replied, unable to come up with an alternative plan. It hurt too much to think at this point in any case.

"Think you can stand?"

"Probably." He gathered up his blades and shoved them back in his boot and pocket, then got his knees under him once more. "Together?"

Banner gripped his free arm to help balance and as one they climbed to their feet, his own strangled cry echoing around the too-silent cave. Once on his feet, he was dismayed to feel himself sway, the only thing keeping him upright for the moment being his taller companion's strong arm. The vertigo pressed him forward until he was unable to keep his forehead from resting on the other man's shoulder. He worked to gather his breath.

"Easy," Banner said softly, not letting go until he was able to lift his head. "Wanna get out of here?"

He nodded, the moment of weakness behind him, then turned to move forward, wanting desperately to hold his wrenched arm against his torn chest, but unable to do so without pulling Banner's arm toward him as well. Slowly, Banner led the way across the gore-covered cavern floor toward the tunnel with his light, careful to keep his left arm as still as possible as they moved through the eerily silent dark.

"Reeves," Banner said suddenly.

"What?"

"Your reference before. Keanu Reeves. You were talking about a movie."

He frowned, keeping his eyes on where he planted is feet and trying to stay close to his longer-legged companion. "Okay, sure."

"And Inigo Montoya," Banner slowed and half-turned. "Another movie. You remember pop culture references, but not your own name?"

He arched a brow, blinking a bit as blood from the abrasion on his forehead slipped to his lashes, stinging his eye. "That's a little pot and kettle, don't you think? _Agent Banner_."

Banner stopped completely. "What are you saying?"

"Just that…you still got no clue who you are," he accused. "You said the name _Sam Banner_ like you were reading it from a book."

Banner frowned at him, turning the light from the cell full into his face.

"Dude—"

The lanky man started to protest, but just as he did a roaring sound echoed from behind and beneath them, bouncing around the cavern like a ricocheting bullet. The two men ducked, looking around the dark room, the light from the cell phone pointed, forgotten, toward the ground.

The darkness itself seemed to be reaching for him as he exclaimed, "What the _fuck_ was that?"

They turned as one, Banner careful not to pull on his arm. Slowly, Banner lifted the cell light and directed it toward the origin of the sound. For a full minute nothing happened. No sound, no movement, no breath. And then the roar echoed once more, this time clearly coming from within the tunnel they'd seen on the other side of the abyss.

"Oh man, this is a Romero movie waiting to happen," he breathed, holding his wounded arm close.

"I think we need to get out of here," Banner muttered.

He could hear the other man's teeth clicking together as he clenched his jaw anxiously. They turned toward the tunnel once more, but this time Banner wasn't as careful about out-walking him. The slight tug from the cuffs had him hissing and hurrying, pain making him breathless long before exertion had a chance. Just before they reached the edge of the tunnel, he felt the air churn around them, a gust chilling his wet hair as though a storm had suddenly picked up.

"Whoa, hey, dude," he called, unable to pull the taller man to a halt by ceased momentum alone. "Stop, stop, _stop_."

Banner skidded to a standstill and turned, the cell light hitting him full in the face once more. As one, they opened their mouths to say something when the roar sounded a third time, this time from above them. He felt the stir of air again and slowly looked over his shoulder into the pitch, certain he was about to see his death staring back at him.

What he saw instead were two large amber eyes, glowing like massive coals from high on the cavern ceiling where he remembered the stalactites were located, pupils' elongated to narrow slits. The cellphone light trembled as Banner raised it to where the eyes hovered, revealing something impossible.

The body was as large as two men, leather-like wings folded closed around the torso, and talons that looked like giant sickles clutched at the rock from where it hung. The head was enormous, the amber eyes taking up half the real estate, and like crystalline strings, long, thin tendrils of saliva stretched from its mouth toward the ground.

"Holy shit," Banner whispered.

"Son of a bitch," he found himself muttering at the same time.

Without another word, Banner lowered the light and they began to slowly back away from the creature, edging toward the opening of the tunnel. Misjudging the distance in the dark, he bounced against the rock wall and bit off a cry of pain as he felt Banner stumble at the entrance. They turned, Banner shining the light on the ground, and hurried into the tunnel.

The space twisted and thrust jagged rock edges toward them, which the light of the cell exposed mere seconds before they avoided crashing into them. The smell of rot and decay intensified in the enclosed space and it was all he could do not to gag. He found himself stretching his senses to their limits, aching to see anything beyond the narrow glow of the cell light, hear anything that wasn't the stumbling, crunching drag of their awkward footsteps on the rocky surface. His skin felt hyper-sensitive, his shivering body tensed and ready for literally anything to step out of the dark and eliminate him.

After several minutes of silent escape, Banner paused to maneuver around a particularly lethal looking stalactite and spared a glance back with the dimming light.

"That was a…a bat, right?"

"You ever seen a _bat_ the size of King Kong?" he returned, voice rasping across his dry throat and trembling a bit in its exit.

"Honestly? No idea." Banner leaned closer, the light like a hot needle into his eyes. "You don't look good, dude."

"Gee thanks, _Agent_ ," he growled. "I'm fine. Let's just get moving."

But Banner was closing in, a single line bisecting his brows, shadows from the cell light turning the man's eyes into pits of worry. "Maybe you should sit down…you're shaking so hard, I feel it in my teeth."

He closed his eyes against the glare of the cell light; he didn't have enough energy to inform the other man that he had plenty of energy. He did _not_ want to be in this narrow tunnel, in the pitch dark, hundreds of feet beneath the ground, the earth pressing close and stealing the air—

"Whoa, whoa, hey." Banner's free hand suddenly gripped his left arm, muffling the light and sending them into complete blackness. "Easy, man. Just breathe, okay?"

He _was_ breathing. He was breathing just fine. In fact, he was breathing super-fine, and so fast he could hear it beating against his ears and slapping the rock walls as they closed in, burying him.

 _Again_ , his mind supplied. _Burying you_ **again** _._

"Son of a…bitch," he exhaled, feeling his knees turn to rubber, unable to hold him up despite his attempts to lock them in place.

Banner's grip shifted and the phone fell, clattering to the ground, the light facing upright and hitting the taller man from beneath his chin. Their cuffed wrists caused Banner to twist slightly to try to catch him, and they went to their knees, the cold of the stone ground almost instantly permeating the denim and seeping into skin.

With Banner's grip keeping him upright, pain slipped across him like a living thing, blanketing him in a bone-deep misery and pulling a recalcitrant groan from his gut.

"Okay, okay, easy, man. Hey, you're okay." Banner's voice was thick with both concern and reassurance.

"Th-thought I was your p-prisoner," he managed through chattering teeth. _Holy shit_ , he was seriously going to pass out, right here in this goddamned, pitch-dark cave if he did not pull it together.

"Yeah, well, pretty sure I'm not the kind of FBI Agent who brings back dead bodies," Banner claimed.

"That right?"

He blinked up at the taller man as he felt the large hand shift against his arm. Banner closed his shadowed eyes once more. The grip on him loosened and he found himself slipping sideways, his good shoulder finding the wall and his body molding against the rock as though it was eager to return to the earth.

Banner gasped, the shadows from the cell phone morphing his basically attractive features into something almost monstrous. Gripping his head, Banner curled forward, groaning.

"Wh-what? What is it?" He demanded, his breath thin, vision tunneling—terrifying in the already dark space.

"There's a…I think something is killing you. I can see you…Jesus _Christ_ ," Banner lifted his head and the shadows obscured his eyes completely. The man was panting as though he'd run a marathon, despite having not moved. "You _died_. I was…I was there, holding you and you…you were dead."

He swallowed. These did not sound like memories; they sounded like nightmares.

"Okay, well. Still here, so…." He had to breathe, had to get a grip. They couldn't _both_ go to pieces or they'd suffocate and die in this tiny, tiny tunnel. "S'let's get outta here."

Banner gulped, drinking the limited air like it was endless. Didn't he realize how little there was? _Stop sucking up all the air, you freaking giant!_

"Right, okay." Banner nodded. "C'mon."

Before he was ready, Banner had grabbed his arm and was pulling him to his feet. He ripped a strangled cry from the air and hurled it toward his reluctant captor, needing the other man to know just how much he protested moving. Banner all-but ignored him, crouching to retrieve his cell phone with its rapidly dimming light and propelled them both forward.

"N-not sure 'f I'm the b-bad guy here or not," he ground out through clenched teeth, "but 'f I wasn't hurting so much…I'd be k-kicking your ass right n-now."

Banner huffed, sounding oddly amused. "Something in me believes you."

They moved forward, slowly, Banner awkwardly holding him close enough their joined arms didn't jostle. The tunnel began to open slightly, the ragged edges of rock and mineral deposits tapering off. The air had changed, too. He could smell…water. The scent of minerals was strong enough he could practically taste it. Banner's breath had evened out. He was just starting to breathe a bit easier himself when the light suddenly went out.

"What'd you do that for?"

"Battery died," Banner grumbled.

"Dammit," he muttered, closing his eyes for a fraction of a second and trying to push the claustrophobic thoughts to the back of his mind.

"Wait, look," Banner gasped, forcing him continue forward. "You see that? There's light up ahead."

Opening his eyes, he realized that Banner was right; a soft ambient glow that could have been sunlight lit the end of the tunnel.

"See? We got down here somehow, right? So I figure—"

It happened so suddenly that for a moment he thought he blacked out. One second the lanky FBI Agent was next to him, practically supporting him through the cold, dark tunnel and the next he was flat on the ground, Banner's weight pulling on his damaged arm with such ferocity breathing was impossible.

Then, with the rush of a bomb blast, reality surged around him once more and he was screaming.

His right arm was plunged into a deep, icy pool, the ground having opened up and given way to a pocket of water. Banner was still attached to him and he could feel the man struggling against the cold, fighting to reach the surface. Without another thought beyond _God, make it stop_ , he shoved his free hand into the water, grabbed the first thing his fingers found, and pulled upwards.


	2. Bat Out of Hell

The stabbing sensation in his lungs as he instinctively gasped for air when the glacial water closed over his head was _nothing_ compared to the shock of a lifetime of memories slamming into him in a single, agonizing blast.

Sam Winchester thrashed and choked, drowning and freezing at once as his body hung suspended, linked to the surface by a set of handcuffs. He couldn't sort through the images assaulting him fast enough to register that in order to live, he must breathe. It took a moment to recognize that someone was pulling him upward by his hair, the instinctive relief of finding air his one grounding factor.

Gagging on water, choking for breath, Sam fought to reach the rock edge, his limbs trembling helplessly as he braced his arms on the flat surface, throwing up water and dragging in air almost at the same time. The man— _Dean…my brother, Dean_ —cuffed to him was practically growling with pain as he reached for the waistband of his jeans to get a better grip and haul him fully out of the water.

They lay gasping in the dark, both shivering from either cold or pain. Sam coughed roughly, trying desperately to expel the water from his lungs, feeling his core muscles seize as he gagged out more liquid. The man— _Dean…this is_ _ **Dean**_ —pounded him weakly on the back, his body a brace as Sam violently rid his body of the freezing water.

With agonizing clarity filled with sharp edges, Sam could suddenly remember his youth, his father, the anger and resentment, the fear when John and Dean didn't return when they thought they would. He remembered discovering the truth about hunting. He remembered leaving home. He remembered Stanford. He remember Jessica. He remembered fire and flame and Dean saving him. He remembered holding a gun on his father, he remembered Dean bleeding, and he remembered the semi-truck smashing their lives apart.

"H-hey, c'mon, man."

Sam lifted his head, hair hanging in his eyes, sticking to his face, memory overlaying reality and making him dizzy, despite the fact that he couldn't see a thing in the pitch surrounding them.

"N-need to move," Dean gasped. "Get you w-warmed up."

"I remember," Sam rasped, coughing harder. "I remember you."

"What?"

But Sam couldn't tell him, not with years rushing at him like a freight train. Not with a funeral pyre for his father blending with Hellhounds shredding is brother's chest. In the cave, Dean was climbing to his knees, saying something about getting up, but Sam was swimming in memories of slit throats and demon-black eyes and drinking blood and incantations in Latin and fire and death… _so much_ death.

Arms still connected, Dean hauled him upright and turned him toward the dim light they'd seen earlier. Sam stumbled forward through memories of Ellen stalwartly refusing to leave a dying Jo, of the burned-out shell of the Roadhouse and finding Ash's watch, of Bobby's hat and library and his voice on the phone.

He remembered hands—Dean's hands, Dad's hands—holding him, grabbing him, steadying him, showing him how to balance a shot gun, how to stitch a wound, how to paint a Devil's Trap. He stumbled headfirst through the dark, his mind a wash of frightened eyes and screaming voices, of fists and blood and accusations, of feeling the presence of someone _not him_ beneath his skin and inside his head, of Horsemen and Adam and Death and intertwined rings and the Apocalypse and of falling…falling forever until the fire wrapped around him.

" _Ahhghh_ , man, don't…don't fall, c'mon," Dean begged, his voice tremulous in the dark. "Gotta keep moving."

But in his mind, Sam was burning, flames consuming him as they had so many spirits vanquished over the years. And then he shattered and there were pieces of his soul scattered and missing and it was Dean, _God_ it was his _brother_ who put him back together and held him solid, made him strong.

 _I am your flesh and blood brother, okay? I am the_ only _one who can kick your ass in real time…. Believe me. Make it stone number one and build on it._

Sam pushed forward, shivering, passing a stalagmite jutting up from the ground as he swam through moments with Amelia, the darkness that surrounded Dean after Purgatory, the cold intrusion of an angel's possession, the emptiness of Dean's eyes as he died, blood-soaked and trembling, in his arms.

 _ **Again**_.

"Th-think it's another…another cavern, okay? J-just a little f-farther," Dean was saying.

"You died on your feet," Sam gasped, teeth chattering loudly in his head. "The last t-time…the last time you died, you were st-standing up."

"'K, you're talking kinda crazy right now, Banner," Dean huffed, the grip he had on the front of Sam's wet shirt tightening as he propelled them both forward.

"But you came b-back," Sam continued, trying to filter through the slowing rush of recollection, catching up to today, to now, to how they'd ended up in this cave. "You came back every time. From Hell and Purgatory and death and demon…you came back."

"You hit your head when you fell?" Dean asked.

"N-no," Sam shook his head, a mighty shiver coursing through him. "The w-water. The water washed off the poison."

"Uh-huh," Dean paused a moment, leaning against the wall for a moment as he caught his breath. "Can we place bets on how much therapy you're gonna need if we get outta this?"

"'s from the bat," Sam continued, blinking as he remembered. "Saliva."

"Right," Dean nodded, stretching the word out like taffy. "I'm starting to think these cuffs were for you, not me."

 _The cuffs_. Sam frowned, his fingers beginning to stiffen from the cold. He couldn't remember the reason for the cuffs.

"C'mon, we're almost to the end. You see it?"

"I see it," Sam nodded shakily. "Matches got wet."

"Huh?"

"N-no matches, no fire," Sam explained.

"Ah, right," Dean pushed against him slightly to get him moving. "We'll figure s-something out. It's going to be fine. You're gonna be fine."

 _That's my job, right? Watch out for my pain in the ass little brother._

The words rang in his head, slicing through the memory of the pain in his back, the memory of the cold filtering through him—different from this chill…a permanent, forever kind of cold. He remembered mud soaking through his jeans, Dean's arms around him like a promise, and the sensation of slipping away as Dean called to him, begged him, held him.

Sam reached up and clutched at the hand holding tightly to his wet shirt, needing the balance of contact. Dean had no idea who he was, but Sam remembered. He remembered _all of it_. His brother's bravado, resistance, resignation. He remembered Dean giving in, giving up, and fighting to the end.

The tunnel narrowed slightly, twisting as it emptied into another cavern, this one larger than the last, but missing the ledge and its terrifying drop-off into nothing. The roof of the cavern was split open, roughly three hundred yards above their heads, the softening light that filled the space giving the sense of the dying rays of sunset illuminating the room. They stopped at the end of the tunnel, both flinching away from even the muted light after so long in the pitch dark.

Shuddering with cold, Sam glanced to his left and caught his first good look at Dean since all this began.

"Jesus, Dean," he gasped. For a moment, his brother didn't react, but then he looked over and Sam saw him flinch away. "You're a mess, man."

"What was that?" Dean frowned slightly, his blood-crusted brows folding across the bridge of his nose.

The right side of his face was abraded from forehead to chin, blood still oozing from some of the deeper cuts. Blood vessels in his right eye had burst turning the white a horrifying red and making the green irises gleam. His right wrist—like Sam's left—was swollen, bruised, and bloody, and Sam didn't even want to see the bruising that he knew had to be covering his brother's right side.

"What did you say?" Dean pressed when Sam didn't answer him.

"Dean," he repeated. "Dean Winchester. That's your name."

Dean blinked again, pulling his chin up, eyes calculating, but not immediately resisting. Sam shivered again before he was able to reveal more and Dean looked away, narrowing his eyes to scan the interior of the cavern. Sam followed his lead, his brain pin-balling between now and then, memories ricocheting against reality and sending him spinning.

The walls of the cavern were dome-like, as if the Earth had molded itself around an overturned bowl. Layers of mineral deposits painted natural graffiti up from the craggy, uneven floor where the brothers stood to the expansive opening far above their heads, the light shifting with cloud-cover and time. The wall opposite the tunnel entrance was easily a hundred yards away, the immensity of the place sending a shudder through Sam completely unrelated to his frigid state.

Debris, dead branches, and leaves were scattered all around the floor of the cavern, no doubt having drifted in from the crack above them over the course of years. They could also see bones from smaller animals near the center of the cavern and Sam was exceedingly grateful that these bones were bleached and stripped, no flesh clinging to cause his stomach to twist in visceral reaction.

"What'd we do, beam in?" Dean muttered, shuffling forward slowly, encouraging Sam to follow.

"Look," Sam jerked his chin to a shadowed wall on their left. "That l-look like a b-bag?"

They headed toward the lump of material Sam had seen and he dropped to his knees when he realized it was indeed a duffel bag. There was also rope, carabiners, and harnesses as well as Dean's jacket.

"S-someone else is here," Sam said, looking over his shoulder and around the dimly lit space.

"What?" Dean crouched slowly and picked up the jacket. "How do you figure that?"

Sam lifted the harness. "Because w-we know shit about c-climbing gear."

He glanced up toward the break in the roof of the cavern and saw the sunlight glinting off of several piton's shoved into the rock face. Looking back at the pile of rope, Sam guessed they'd lowered themselves in and pulled the rope from the carabiners at the top of the cavern—though how they'd been planning to get back out was anyone's guess.

Dean dug through the pockets of the jacket, pulling out his 1911, a flask, a small flashlight—which he immediately turned on—a strange-looking, thin silver whistle, and his ID. Sam watched his brother's shoulders sag with something like relief as he shone the flashlight on the face of his FBI badge.

"You were right about the Dean part," he said with a crooked grin. "But it's Stark. Not Winchester."

"Dean Stark," Sam dead-panned. "And that seems right to you?"

Dean narrowed his eyes, head tilting slightly to the side in a move Sam recognized as doubt.

"C'mon, man. Stark and B-banner? Really? N-nothing Mr. Pop Culture?" Sam pressed, remembering Dean's kid-like grin when he created this particular set of fake IDs. The second _Avengers_ movie had just come out and he'd been on a superhero kick.

At that Dean sank down to his rear, curling his shoulders forward. "So, you're saying you…you _don't_ turn into a green rage monster when you get pissed off?"

"They're fake IDs."

Sam started to shrug out of his wet jacket, managing to get it off of his right arm, but wincing as the weight of it hit the cuff and his wounded wrist. If he was going to warm up, he had to get out of his wet clothes, and there was no way he was going to do that while still cuffed to his brother.

Coughing roughly, Sam took the flash light from Dean, trying to hold it steady over the cuffs.

"Here." Dean picked up his gun. "We'll shoot them apart."

"No freaking way!" Sam instinctively—and without thought—jerked his wrist away from the barrel of the gun causing Dean to cry out in pain and drop the weapon. "Sorry."

"H-hold still," Dean implored, reaching for the gun again. "I got this."

"You're shaking like an 80 year old," Sam nudged the gun out of Dean's reach with a sweep of his free hand. "And I can't even keep this light steady."

"So, what's your idea, then, genius?" Dean growled, closing his eyes briefly.

Sam handed the flashlight back to him. "Hold this as still as you can," he said, pulling out a small cloth case from the duffel bag. "I'm gonna pick the lock."

"Sure you are," Dean muttered, but held the flashlight on the lock at Sam's wrist as Sam selected the right pick for the job.

It took him a few more minutes than he expected it to, the flashlight trembling in Dean's grip by the time he was done, but the relief of having the metal off of his wounded wrist was worth Dean's disbelieving muttering that had been the soundtrack to his progress.

"Huh," Dean said when their arms dropped free of each other.

"Now you," Sam said, reaching for him.

"No; get out of those clothes before you turn into a human Popsicle." Dean shifted slightly away. "I'll round up some of this crap to burn, warm you up."

Dean stood and was moving around the edge of the cavern before Sam could stop him. Shivering violently and aching from the cold, Sam decided to take his brother's advice and began to strip out of as many of his wet clothes as he could. He laid out his jeans and shirts along the rock ledge behind him, goosebumps rising on his bare skin. Rubbing his legs vigorously, he noticed that while the skin on his wrist was torn and the joint swollen, nothing seemed broken and he was able to move his fingers with relative ease.

The light around him was dying quickly; night was coming on and they hadn't found Dean's cell phone in the pack to provide back-up light. The warmth that slipped in from the outside through the crack in the ceiling of the cavern faded quickly with the encroaching darkness. Sam slid his bare arms into Dean's dry jacket, fastening the buttons over his chilled torso. Shuddering, he dug through the pack and found an extra pair of socks and several rolled up bandages, but no spare clothes. He also found another book of matches, some food, four bottles of water, and what appeared to be oddly marked bullets.

"Banner."

"It's Sam," he replied automatically.

"Whatever. You need to see this."

Sam looked over his shoulder and saw that the beam from Dean's flashlight was about fifty yards away, trained on something on the ground. Standing shakily, Sam made his way along the edge of the cave wall in his stocking feet until he stood directly behind his brother. He looked down at the area where Dean shone the beam of the flashlight and flinched at the unexpected sight.

It was a body, a relatively fresh one, lying face down, deep lacerations running the length of its back.

"Judging by the threads, I'd say he's a cop," Dean said, toeing the body until it rocked slightly.

"Dude!" Sam protested.

"What? Not like he cares," Dean replied.

Reluctantly conceding that point, Sam crouched and carefully turned the body over, jerking back when he saw what was left of the man's face. It looked like it had been gouged apart by an ice pick.

"I did _not_ need to see that," Dean muttered.

"You're right, he's a cop," Sam sighed, pulling the man's badge from his belt. "Looks like he was the climber, too." He flicked at a purple carabiner that was attached to the harness the man still wore.

"So, I'm guessing these are his," Dean lifted his wounded wrist. "Question is, why'd he put them on us?"

Sam rubbed at his head, thinking. The memory was elusive; he could remember the Christmas he gave Dean a gift he'd originally meant for his father with precise clarity but the last twenty-four hours were a blurred mess of muted voices and slipping images.

He shivered, then coughed roughly into the crook of his elbow. Water stubbornly sloshed around in his lungs, but he couldn't cough hard enough to eject it.

"Hey, c'mon," Dean moved away from the body of the cop. "You're gonna freeze to death, you run around bare-assed naked down here."

"I'm not naked," Sam protested, tugging at his damp boxers while eyeing the dead cop's jeans. Too bad the guy was about five inches too short.

"You find any matches?"

"Y-yes," Sam nodded.

"Keep moving," Dean ordered. "You move, you're alive. Help me grab some of this wood."

Sam was able to gather more than his brother—Dean picking up a stick or two and shuffling a mess of leaves and debris with his feet back over to where they'd left the pack—and within a few minutes, they had a large fire lit, the heat warming Sam's icy skin, the smoke curling up through the hole high above their heads. The light shifted, day having given way to night, and the beams spilling in through the crack in the ceiling of the cavern now held the pearl of moonlight.

As he warmed up, Sam felt the aches settle into his bones, and looked over at Dean's hunched form. The guy was hurting, that much was clear. But he was on guard, careful.

"It's Winchester," Sam said.

"What is?" Dean asked, not looking away from the fire. He was curled sideways, leaning on the wall and the duffel, the handcuff still on his wrist.

"My name." Sam grabbed the lock pick and eased closer to Dean, gently lifting the other man's wounded arm so that he could see the lock by firelight.

"Thought you said that was my name," Dean replied in a tight voice, his whole body tensing as Sam held his damaged arm.

"It is."

Sam glanced up and saw Dean's eyebrows fold into inverted V's as he took this in.

"So…what. You're saying we're brothers?"

Sam nodded.

"I…uh, can't remember having a brother."

"You can't remember anything," Sam countered, gathering up the lock pick.

Dean shook his head. "Not true. I remember plenty. Just…not you."

Sam frowned, Dean's words slicing through him with more impact than he knew the other man meant for them to have. Memories were tickling him, emerging like flashes of light at the corners of his eyes. Ash and the Roadhouse. Bobby's panic room. Discovering the bunker. Rebuilding the Impala. Translating Dad's journal. Dean finding him in the Bender's barn trapped in a cage. Finding Dean tied up as an offering to a pagan god. Images, phrases, shrieks of pain, cries for help, the rare burst of laughter.

Across every memory, every moment, was Dean.

"Fake Fed IDs, blades, a sweet Desert Eagle…," Dean held himself still as he watched Sam pick the lock free and gently pull the metal away from his damaged skin, "and some bad-ass lock-picking skills. What are we? Spies? Assassins?"

"Hunters."

Dean lifted a brow. "What, like deer?"

"Not…exactly."

 _That fabric softener teddy bear? Oh, I'm gonna hunt that little bitch down._

Sam slumped back against the wall, also leaning on the duffel, his right shoulder propped against Dean's left. For a moment, he thought the other man would pull away, but apparently he was beat up and tired enough the extra support was welcome.

"We hunt monsters," Sam told him. "You taught me about them, actually."

" _I_ did?"

Sam nodded, waiting.

"Monsters. Like a bat the size of King Kong?"

"It's called an Olitiau. A cave demon."

"Of course it is," Dean said, his voice strained as he tried to shift positions.

Sam could tell Dean wasn't taking his words seriously. And, truth be told, how could he? Even Sam—who remembered every hunt, every loss, every death—didn't always understand their lives. Someone accepting the fact that they hunt monsters at face value was like looking through a keyhole and saying they could see the whole room.

Coughing again, Sam dragged in a shaky breath, trying to figure out the best way to explain angels to someone who had once been earmarked as a vessel for an archangel, or demons to a man who had once become one and survived.

How did he tell Dean that not only were vampires real, but that Dean had actually been one for a day? Or that souls were not just a part of the Sunday School script but could literally be torn from their bodies? Or that both Dean and their father had traded their souls at one time?

Or that they'd each seen Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory? How did he explain working _with_ the King of Hell and _against_ the Scribe of God?

Glancing askance at Dean, he frowned thinking for a brief moment about the last memory that had sucked the air from him as he fought toward the surface of the icy cave pool: Dean, beaten and bloody, eyes wounded and weary, slumped in defeat as Metatron drove an angelic sword through his brother's chest.

 _I'm proud of us_.

Sam shivered, needing to find words heavy enough to stand on. Something that would help him take action, even if that action was convincing the man who raised him that he wasn't a stranger.

"Can I look at your arm?"

"It's fine." Dean's voice was hollow with pain, his response ironically predictable.

"It's _not_ fine," Sam snapped, exhaustion wearing his patience whisper-thin. "You fell off a cliff and hung from your wrist, Dean. Let me look at it."

"You a doctor or something, too?" Dean growled, tucking close in on himself like a wounded animal.

"No, but I've just sewn you back together more times than I can remember. _Literally_." Sam snapped. "I've set your bones and monitored your concussions and stolen medicine from clinics and kept you alive when the whole fucking world wanted you dead. So I think I deserve a _little_ credit."

Dean simply blinked in the face of his tirade. Sam sank back on his rear, coughing as his sluggish lungs tried to keep up with his need for air. He was warm and nearly dry, but that cave water had done him no favors.

"How do you know all this stuff, man?" Dean asked quietly. "You…how do you…. How do you know _me_ and I don't know _you_?"

Sam sighed, rubbing his face. "I told you," he said. "The water washed off the poison."

"Poison… _what_? What poison?"

"The Olitiau's saliva is poisonous. It affects different species differently—for humans, it's an amnesiac."

Dean's brows folded once more. "You're saying…I'm covered in bat spit?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"That's…just gross."

"We could always dunk you in the water—"

"Dude, no," Dean shook his head. "That was fun enough fishing you out of it the first time."

At the mention of being rescued from the water, Sam felt memories slip over him once more like a poorly edited movie reel in his mind. Images of Dean gripping him tightly as a vision took him to his knees, Dean grabbing him as Lucifer rose, Dean watching his bus to Stanford pull away, Dean hauling him from the fire that took Jessica from his life, Dean shooting the shtriga, Dean bringing him back from the edge that Lucifer tried to push him over, Dean next to him every time he woke wounded and hurting.

His whole life was defined by both the presence and absence of his brother. Not his father, not his girlfriend, not a friend or mentor…his brother.

 _I've been looking up to you since I was four…studying you…trying to be just like my big brother._

It was a strange thing to be forced to put his life— _their_ lives—back together based on the evidence of their journey rather than the memories of their truth. There had always been a path toward reason, a justification for choice in everything they'd survived—even to the point of Dean sacrificing his soul and bargaining with an angel to save Sam's life.

But then he saw it from a perspective that lacked the grounding sensation of having lived each moment, no matter the impossibility of it all. And he couldn't find the balance he'd always taken for granted. The constant that was, simply, _Dean_.

Lifting his gaze to his brother's wounded face, he met Dean's mirror-like eyes and felt for the first time what it was like to be on the other side. Dean was watching him with wary caution, the way he watched strangers, the way he watched those he didn't trust. Though he held perfectly still, Sam still felt as though Dean was circling him, judging, measuring.

In all the memories that rushed him in the last hour, not one of them included Dean not trusting him. Including that horrible year when Sam had been absent his soul. When his brother had looked at him through the eyes of a demon, Sam hadn't seen this…caution. This fear. Even when Dean was truly afraid, it was never of Sam.

 _Look after my wheels. And Sam? Remember what Dad taught you…and…remember what I taught you._

The thing about life, Sam knew, was that while it was lived linearly, it was remembered in a tangle of moments. Images and sensations rolled around each other until time no longer stretched out behind in an endless highway of events, but instead curled up around instances of clarity, shaping a person through perception rather than reality.

"Let me tell you a little bit about my brother," Sam started, quietly positioning himself in an effort to get at Dean's wounded side. "He has the uncanny ability to be a world-class asshole and one of the best people I have ever met at the same time."

Dean tilted his head, listening.

"He's a genius, even though he hides it. Because he says when people don't know how smart you are, they let their guard down and you learn more about them."

"Makes sense," Dean nodded.

"He is stubborn as hell, loyal to a fault, fierce—scary fierce, actually." Sam leaned forward. "And _to-his-soul_ good."

Dean frowned, shifting his eyes away and toward the fire. "Thought you said you saw me killing someone. Saw me with…with _black eyes_."

"Yeah, well," Sam rubbed at the back of his neck. "Our jobs are complicated. And we've both been through some shit."

"The kind of shit where we kill people?"

Sam looked down. "Sometimes, yeah." He thought of Kevin. Of Charlie. Of Ellen and Jo. Of Bobby. Of Dad. "And sometimes…people die to save us."

Dean looked out into the growing darkness of the cavern, moonlight slipping higher in the night sky and illuminating the air above them.

"You say all this stuff, but…I don't _know_ you, man." He looked back at Sam. "I don't remember any of that."

"You will," Sam said with more confidence than he felt. "I think you just…you must've got hit with more of the saliva—"

He paused, sucking in a breath as a flash of memory shot through him like a lightning bolt.

...

 _Twisting around their cuffed wrists, Dean pushed Sam away from the creature as it swooped down from the opening to the cavern, its lithe body moving more like a dragon than a bat. Sheriff Larkin fired off two rounds, neither of them finding a target, and the Olitiau screeched, zoning in on the man before either brother could so much as call out a warning._

 _The attack was swift and vicious and the man was dead before the creature took his eyes. They were separated from their backpack—and their weapons—and Dean's arm was turned backwards in his effort to keep Sam behind him._

" _Move, man," Dean hissed, pushing Sam back._

" _Where?! We're in a goddamned cave!"_

" _Down that tunnel—go!"_

 _The Olitiau, finished with the Sheriff, brought its massive head up at the sound of Dean's voice and Sam tensed, waiting for it to breathe fire or spear them with its deadly talons. The spray of saliva was a shock, catching Dean full in the face and torso, and splashing across Sam's free arm and soaking into the lower half of his body. It was glacial, like being hit by liquid ice. Dean gasped and stumbled, momentarily going limp against him._

 _Sam grabbed his brother's shoulder and pulled, moving faster than he thought possible through the dark, miraculously missing jutting rock and cave formations, dragging Dean behind him and all the while feeling as though the breath of the Olitiau marked their escape. And then they were suddenly free of the tunnel and he felt space around him, sounds echoing against the black. Sam went to his knees pulling Dean with him as the creature clawed its way along the rock._

 _Sam couldn't see it. He could only hear it. Hear it and his brother's rasping gasps for breath as he struggled against the dark itself._

" _Stay down!" Sam whispered urgently._

 _But Dean was clearly disoriented, his scrambling and grasping at Sam indicative of his panic. Sam moved to grab him, try to keep him close until he could calm down, but before he could move the Olitiau screamed. It was the only description he could come up with. The only thing he could see in the dark of the cave were the creature's large, amber eyes. The scream shook through both of them, and Dean shot to his feet, his cuffed arm tugging at Sam._

" _Dean!" Sam bellowed._

 _It was too late. The Olitiau emerged from the tunnel and took to the air, seeing in the dark with some sort of sonar. The stir of air told him the creature's wing swiped at them and Sam heard Dean cry out, jerking back and away. Sam knew the creature had clipped his brother. They had to move, but he didn't know where to go. He tugged at Dean once more, backing away from the scream, away from the amber eyes._

 _Dean followed—their tether not giving him a choice—and the Olitiau charged once more, the amber eyes growing impossibly large. The spray hit them again, the edge of it saturating Sam's torso but the brunt of it slamming into Dean, knocking him sideways. And then suddenly his brother's weight was pulling at Sam, crashing him against the cave floor and dragging him forward and into confusion._

 _..._

"…fade on me, man, c'mon."

"What?" Sam blinked, the fire coming back into focus. "What's the matter?"

Dean was looking at him as though trying to decide if he should lock him up or hand him a blanket and some soup.

"You tell me," Dean challenged.

"I just…I remembered how you fell off the cliff," Sam explained. "How you got that." He pointed to the wounds on Dean's face.

"Double-tap with bat spit, huh?" Dean recounted Sam's earlier surmise.

"Basically," Sam nodded. "Probably why getting it off your arms when you pulled me out of the water wasn't enough."

Sam wasn't sure if Dean was aware of the way he curled in on himself when the water was mentioned, or of the way he was visibly shivering, even though he was completely dry and sitting close to a roaring fire, but seeing that little bit of vulnerability broke something inside Sam.

"Dean," he started, plucking one of the rolls of gauze bandages from the pack and wrapping it slowly around his wounded wrist as a gesture. "It doesn't matter if you believe me about the monsters. But if you can't move, we can't get out of here."

" _You_ can," Dean said quietly.

 _I'm tired, Sam. I'm tired of this job. This life. This weight on my shoulders, man…I'm tired of it._

"Well," Sam sighed, shifting a little close to his brother. "I'm not leaving without you. So," he ducked his head, catching Dean's eyes, "will you let me look at your arm now?"

"Not sure if you can do anything," Dean grumbled, relenting.

"Neither am I until I look, right?"

Sam waited, watching Dean as his brother stared at the fire, a muscle along his jaw coiling and dancing under his skin. He was obviously turning Sam's words over in his mind; Sam simply let the quiet linger until it pulled tight between them.

"Okay," Dean acquiesced softly.

Sam nodded, moving so that he didn't block the light from the fire. With Dean's help, he unbuttoned his brother's flannel shirt and pulled it from his left arm, rolling it carefully down his right until he was able to carefully pull it from the damaged wrist. The skin around Dean's wrist matched Sam's in its resemblance to an attempted skinning, the joint was swollen, Dean's fingers bent into an almost claw-like shape. The unnatural angle of the radius made Sam's insides shiver. He was just glad the bone hadn't pushed through skin.

Pulling out the flashlight, Sam lifted Dean's T-shirt and tried not to audibly hiss when he saw the massive bruising along his brother's ribs, running up to his shoulder and surrounding that swollen joint. The bruising traveled up the side of Dean's neck and blended with the blood that coated the side of his face. The darkest part of the bruise, however, was just below Dean's ribs. Sam found himself trying to recall external signs of internal bleeding.

"Pretty, huh?"

"Well, it's colorful, I'll give you that," Sam sighed, gently rolling the flat of his hand along Dean's rib cage, wincing in unison with his brother when he felt a give along several of the bones. "So, here's the thing. You definitely have some broken ribs, here. Also your wrist is definitely broken and I think your shoulder popped out, but slid back in."

"I felt it pop in when you pulled me over the edge."

"You've dislocated that one a couple times, so we know the drill—or would, if we weren't in a cave."

"Ice and immobilization," Dean intoned. He glanced at Sam. "Yeah, _that_ I remember. Like I remember how to field dress that Desert Eagle with my eyes closed. Or that that I can hit a bullseye with the knife in my boot from twenty yards." He winced as Sam lowered his T-shirt. "But I don't remember how I ended up hanging off a cliff or why my head feels like an army of little men are chipping away at my brain. Or the fact that I have a brother."

"It'll come back," Sam promised emptily again. "Let me wrap your ribs and set your wrist at least and let's try to get some sleep. We can figure out how to get out of here tomorrow."

"What about the…the demon cave bat thing?"

Sam dropped his head forward. "Right."

Dean was quiet for a moment. "Tomorrow."

Sam lifted his head and smiled. "Tomorrow."

Wrapping Dean's ribs was relatively simple, thanks to the bandages he'd found in the pack. The hard part was ignoring the small sounds of distress his brother was unable to stifle as Sam pulled the bandages tight to keep the bones from moving too much. Setting Dean's wrist was another issue.

Finally deciding to use the rest of the gauze along with two of the smaller sticks they'd gathered to keep the fire stoked and straps from the harness that had apparently carried them down into the cave, Sam set the bones as best he could. He pointedly ignored Dean's comparing him to MacGyver—as well as the stream of curses that turned the air blue around them—and helped his brother pull his shirt back on before immobilizing his arm with the harness.

Once Dean was somewhat settled, Sam pulled on his mostly-dry jeans so that his legs were at least covered. His shirts and jacket he left to dry further from the heat of the fire; he kept Dean's jacket wrapped around him for added warmth.

"Get some rest," Sam suggested. "Not much we can do until morning."

Dean settled back against the rock wall, staring at the fire. Sam mimicked him after tossing a few more sticks into the flames.

"Hey, uh…?"

He could practically hear Dean waffling around the use of his name—not ready to concede the familiarity of family. "Yeah?"

"Still not sure I believe you about monsters."

"What, that they're out there, or that we hunt them?"

"Either. Or…both."

 _I mean, come on…we hunt monsters. We search out things that want to kill us. I mean, who does that? Crazy people!_

Sam chuffed slightly, remembering Dean's words. "Well, some things are true whether you believe them or not."

As though to punctuate his sentence, the same unearthly cry from before echoed through the tunnel that connected the two caverns. Sam flinched, instinctually drawing closer to his brother. Dean, however, reached for his gun, a move so quintessentially _him_ that Sam nearly smiled.

"What's this thing called again?"

"Olitiau," Sam replied.

"And besides spitting on people and being freakishly huge, what does it do?"

"Um," Sam frowned, reaching for the flashlight and shining it on the entrance to the tunnel. "It…it, uh…."

A memory flared. Dean standing in a hotel room, sliding bronzed bullets marked with a sigil into a clip, a scowl on his face as he argued a point.

...

" _Don't much matter what kind of monster it is, does it? This is what we do."_

" _Yeah, Dean, but…c'mon, a cave? Seriously?"_

" _Since when have you been scared of caves?" Dean shoved the clip into the base of his gun, sliding the weapon into the duffel._

" _I'm not scared of_ caves _," Sam retorted. "Just…can't we wait until it comes out to feed?"_

 _Dean gave him a look. "It ate three people last night, Sammy."_

" _I know."_

" _I don't want to get eaten by a giant bat."_

 _Sam sighed. "Fine. But I want it on record that I think this is a really bad idea."_

" _Noted."_

" _We're gonna have to get some climbing gear."_

 _Dean grinned. "Turns out, I know a guy."_

 _..._

"It eats people," Sam said, flinching as the screech came again, this time sounding much closer.

"Well that's just great," Dean grumbled, trying to feed a bullet into the chamber with his bandaged hand.

Sam reached over and helped him cock the gun, then returned the light to the tunnel.

"You want to do this, Mr. My Right Hand Is Free?" Dean muttered, readying his stance.

"You're the better shot," Sam replied. "Even left-handed."

The air around them seemed to tug forward, smoke curling away from the opening and leaning toward the tunnel entrance.

"Here it comes," Sam warned.

The scraping sound of talons on rock competed with the slush and swipe of the creature's leathery wings as it emerged from the tunnel like a butterfly from its cocoon. Sam took an involuntary breath as the Olitiau stretched its wings, beating against the air and stirring their fire, scattering sparks and ash and smaller bits of wood and causing them to blink and turn away from the twisting, writhing smoke.

With another screech that shook the broad cavern around them, the Olitiau took flight, scattering the leaves, twigs, and bone as it reached for the opening several hundred feet over their heads. Dean sighted and fired, sending three bullets after the creature, but it pulled its wings close, turning itself into a missile and broke through the crack in the ceiling, exiting into the moonlit night.

In the wake of its exodus, Sam and Dean sank back, their fire catching on pieces of debris around them.

"Tell me there's liquor in that flask, man," Dean finally said, his voice edged with a raw quality Sam hadn't heard since…since Dad.

"Holy water," Sam replied, eyes still on the opening above them.

Dean dropped the gun to the top of the pack. "One of us is in the wrong line of work."


	3. I've Seen All Good People

Dean's arm beat with its own pulse; the other guy had braced it fairly well, but pain from broken bones and shredded muscles wasn't going to go away without some pretty strong pain killers. All he wanted was to sleep. Just close his eyes and pretend he wasn't trapped beneath the earth with a crazy man who claimed to be his brother in the middle of what was apparently a monster's lair.

"This is the last night of the full moon," Sam was saying, continuing the litany of information he'd started the moment that…that _thing_ had flown out through the top of the cavern. "It'll feed tonight and then go back into its nest until next month."

Dean pulled himself slowly to his feet, using the roughened cave wall as a support. He found himself puffing out quick huffs of breath once upright to combat the surge of pain that threatened to light his nerve endings on fire, but pushed through it and as he moved forward, heading toward where the flames had caught the dried leaves ablaze.

"We don't get it tomorrow, we have to come back here in a month," Sam declared.

"You're assuming," Dean grunted, "that we'll actually make it out of this cave."

Sam was blessedly quiet for a long moment. "We'll get out."

Dean kicked out the scattered flames that found the cave debris, herding a few rebellious, burning sticks back to their big fire with the thick soles of his boots. "Sure about this, huh?"

"We didn't survive the Apocalypse, Hell, Lucifer's Cage, Purgatory, and the Mark of Cain just to die trapped in a cave," Sam declared.

"Uh-huh," Dean eased down next to the pack again, wrapping his good arm around his aching torso. His ribs were on fire and he was pretty sure something was stabbing him inside. "And I'm guessing these… hunting shenanigans are how we survived the freaking Apocalypse?"

"Something like that."

Dean heard the smile in the other guy's voice. "What's so funny?"

"Just…I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've heard 'shenanigans' and 'apocalypse' in the same sentence."

Dean couldn't help but allow a small grin to slip past his reserves. "Well, we're not getting out tonight. And as much as I hate being in here, with that thing out there, it's pretty much the safest place right now."

"Why do you hate being here?"

Dean shifted, trying in vain to find a comfortable position against the rock wall. The only thing that offered him any kind of solace was the warmth of the fire; outside of that, he was basically miserable. The last thing he wanted to do was justify his fear to this guy.

"It's dark and cold; that's not good enough for you?"

"It just that…you were the one who wanted this hunt. You were actually pretty psyched about going spelunking."

Dean shot him a look.

"It means cave exploring," Sam elaborated.

"I know what it means," Dean grumbled, though in truth he'd come up with a completely different definition. "And I don't know what this guy you remember thought about all of this. All I know is…," he winced, frowning, and tried once more to adjust his arm, "it feels like being buried."

Sam was quiet once more and Dean sensed him tensing next to him. "Yeah, well. Makes sense that would bother you."

"Why? Was I buried or something?" Dean scoffed.

Sam looked at him and for a moment the look of anguish and regret in his eyes was so raw and familiar, Dean caught his breath.

"Yeah. You were."

Dean stared at the other man for several seconds before blinking and looking back toward the fire. "I don't want to know."

Without another word, Sam folded his now-dry shirts on top of the pack and reached over. When Dean realized that the other man was actually trying to ease him down onto the padding he resisted.

"You're exhausted," Sam argued.

"What, like you're not?"

Sam dropped his hands, staring at nothing for a moment, clearly captured by another memory. Dean simply waited him out; at least the guy wasn't trying to get him to lie down anymore.

"I remembered why we were in the cuffs," Sam finally revealed.

Dean froze, searching his memory. All he could come up with was a strange collage of steel and pain and emptiness that stretched for eternity. Cradling his wounded arm, he watched Sam.

"The cop…his name is— _was_ —Larkin," Sam began. "He didn't want to turn his investigation into the serial killer deaths over to the Feds—to _us_ specifically."

"Well, since we're _fake_ Feds…."

"Yeah, well, the second night of killings convinced him that he needed help," Sam continued. "So, when we said that we thought the killer was holed up in these caves, he agreed to help. Then we got down here—"

"And let me guess, dropped some truth on him and he thought we were nut-jobs."

"More or less," Sam conceded. "He actually thought _we_ were the killers."

"I probably would have, too."

"That's what you said…and why you let him cuff us together."

Sam winced slightly as he said the last words, scrunching his nose up slightly and for no reason whatsoever, a thought slid through Dean's mind like quicksilver: _He looks like Mom when he does that_.

Blinking, shaking his head roughly, Dean refocused on what the guy had last said. "Wait, I _let him_ cuff us?"

"But then the Olitiau attacked us, killed Larkin, caught you across the face with the edge of its wing, and we were running. Getting hit by the saliva…that's what knocked you over the ledge."

"Some mighty hunter, taken out by bat spit," Dean mocked.

"We still have a job to do, Dean," Sam pressed.

"So you say," Dean groaned, giving in and lying down on the folded up shirts Sam had offered. "All I want to do is get out of this cave and back to…to whatever life I left up there."

"I told you—"

"Stop, man…just…just _stop_ ," Dean broke in. "I can't listen to this anymore."

Sam sighed heavily and something inside Dean felt weighted, as if he knew he'd disappointed the other guy and was sorry for it. But right now, he couldn't bring himself to do much about it. Exhaustion and pain were more than worthy opponents and he was losing the battle. He slid into sleep without so much as a warning to his companion, hoping for rest if not healing.

He got neither.

Stripped of the protective walls consciousness provided, the images and sensations that had been tugging at the edges of his mind since surfacing into this weird reality beneath the earth became solid, practically tangible. He was instantly saturated with what could only be memories—too full of substance to be fabricated from his subconscious. He heard screams, felt pain, but it was the darkness that was most disturbing.

In his sleep, he felt himself rush back to reality with the odd sensation of rising from beneath water. He was in a box, rough-hewn wood surrounding him, and no light seeping through the miniscule cracks he felt with his fingertips. What little air surrounded him tasted stale, as though it had been trapped too long inside the dark and was dying without benefit of light.

Panic overcame him and he instinctively fought—slamming first his fist, then when that hurt too much, the flat of his hand against the barrier above his head. He was thirsty for air, desperate for something to focus on, something to see that wasn't this endless night. The images playing on the backs of his eyelids were horrific, impossible, filled with terror and blood and pain.

Breaking through the rough wood, his fingers felt dirt, loose and malleable, falling through the cracks and covering his face. Turning to his side, using his body as leverage, he continued to fight his way upwards, the earth shifting around him, covering him, parting for him. He breathed as shallowly as possible so as not to breathe in dirt, but that combined with the effort to dig his way free had him panting with exertion, light-headed, and weak.

The urge to scream, to growl in frustration, to cry with helplessness sat balanced on the edge of his sanity, tilting its head and watching him seek the surface. It _had to_ be there. He needed it to be there.

And then…air. At his fingertips. Wind. Grass. _Light_.

He pushed harder, shoving both hands up into the dirt-free space, splitting the earth apart until the light trickled in through the roots and worms and soil. His arm and shoulder and head broke through as one, the desperate panting becoming more of a gasp, a sob, a prayer to an uninterested entity saying _thank you…thank you_.

"…easy, Dean, take it easy."

The voice echoed through the air around him, shimmying through the light that bathed him with welcomed, amazing warmth after so much cold. So much darkness.

"Wake up, man, c'mon, you're scaring me."

That wasn't right. There wasn't anyone here. He'd been alone. _Completely_ alone.

"Hey, I'm right here, okay? Just…dude, you need to breathe, okay? Just calm down, Dean, _Jesus_. Breathe with me."

A large hand grasped his and suddenly he was no longer climbing from a grave in the center of an empty clearing, but lying in a dank, dark cave, the glow of firelight turning the profile of the man hovering over him copper. The man— _Sam_ , he remembered, _Sam Banner…no…no that wasn't it_ —lifted Dean's hand and pressed it flat against his chest, covering it with his own hand, in a gesture that sent shivers of memory through him.

"Feel that? Me breathing? Do that." Sam pulled in a deep, slow breath and Dean found himself instinctively matching it, forcing his stuttering lungs to steady. "There you go."

"What the hell, man?" Dean rasped, his voice an ugly, raw scratch of sound against the crackle of their fire.

"You woke me up," Sam said, helping him to sit up and handing him the water bottle.

Dean drank deeply, shocked at how dry his throat was.

"You were like…not screaming, exactly, but…you scared me. Thought you were going to have a heart attack."

Dean let his head fall back against the rock wall, handing the bottle back to Sam. "Bad dream."

"Yeah, no shit."

"Was…, uh." He narrowed his eyes, lifting his head to stare at the fire. "Was climbing out of a grave."

"Huh."

He waited a beat, then, "Did I? Climb out of a grave?"

"Yeah," Sam replied, suddenly becoming very interested in the buttons of the jacket he wore. "You, uh…you died. To save me. My soul."

Dean frowned, not wanting to hear…but that dream had been so _vivid_. He needed to know more.

"On my feet," he recalled Sam saying.

"Uh, no," Sam shook his head. "That was a different time. You've…you've kinda died a lot actually."

Dean rubbed his face, wincing as his fingers hit the open wounds on his forehead and cheek. Images played with his head, teasing him with a memory and then pulling it away before he could get a firm grasp on anything tangible. The space beyond the fire was starting turn gray with the slanting moonlight, time marching forward despite their circumstances.

"I was alone," he said finally. "When I got out of the…uh, of the ground, I remember being alone."

"Yeah." Sam's reply was no more than an exhale.

Dean narrowed his eyes and glanced over at the other man. "If we're brothers…how come you weren't there?"

Sam winced. "I didn't know you were coming back."

Dean lifted his chin. "Bet that came as a surprise. Me gate-crashing your life and demanding you give me my old room back."

"Your car, actually."

"My what?"

Sam tipped his head, a crooked smile ghosting his lips. "You demanded I undouche your car. And you took it back."

"Why is this funny to you?"

Sam chuffed. "Because, man. We've been through all of this already. I mean…it was literally _years_ ago."

There was something dismissive in Sam's reply. It flared a white-hot anger inside Dean that had him needing to move. He pushed away from the duffel bag.

"Yeah, well, doesn't much feel like that."

"No, hey, wait—"

But Dean wasn't interested in this guy's apologies or reasoning. He was in pain, his head was a tangle of _real_ and _not real_ , and he was basically buried alive with some guy claiming to be family. There wasn't one fact in this situation wasn't completely insane.

Using the rock wall behind him as leverage, Dean heaved himself upright, digging his fingertips in for a grip when the world shifted around him.

"Dean, man, c'mon."

"C'mon, nothing," Dean snapped, watching as Sam pushed effortlessly to his feet and wanting to punch the guy for his impeccable balance. "You stand there with a straight face and tell me we hunt monsters…that I've…that I've _died_. Multiple times. And then laugh because it happened a long time ago? Fuck you, man."

"Look, I just meant that a lot of other stuff—way worse stuff—has happened since then, that's all!" Sam yelled, then coughed roughly from the force of sound. Dean could practically hear the guy's lungs rattling in his chest. "I thought you'd gotten past it."

"I gave you that impression, did I?" Dean cradled his wounded arm against his chest, the harness a welcome weight.

"Yes!" Sam yelled, pressing a hand to his sternum. "You did, actually!"

Dean moved slightly away from the fire, the flames suddenly too close. "Just said not to worry about all that Hell stuff, I'm good."

Sam brought his head up so fast Dean could have sworn someone pulled on that long hair of his. "Wait, what was that?"

"What was what?"

"You remember Hell?"

Dean was unable to speak for a moment, breath caught at the base of his throat. _You remember Hell_ …. The screams, the darkness, the terror…it had been _Hell_?

"Dean." Sam spoke his name like a bullet fired between them. "Dean!"

"What!"

"You _do_ , don't you?" Sam's voice was hushed.

"I…I don't—" He couldn't pinpoint anything beyond that dream. The dream of being buried. The dream that had become his reality.

Sam suddenly bent and started digging through their pack.

"What the hell are you doing?" Dean growled.

"Getting something to carry water in," Sam snapped.

"What for?" Dean shot back, knowing the answer and not liking it.

"Because we're washing that poison off of you!" Sam bellowed, straightening with an empty water bottle in one hand and the flask in the other.

"No." Dean replied, dully.

"Look, I'm not going to dunk you in it—"

"I said _no_!" Dean shot back.

"Why _not_?" Sam yelled with equal measure.

"Because I don't _want_ to remember!"

The words were practically hanging suspended between them, solid enough he could reach out and grab them. They stood on either side of the dying fire, the cave around them turned to ink as night slowly released its grip. Dean could sense dawn coming; the air had started to smell different above their heads. Cleaner, somehow.

"But… _why_?" Sam's question broke across the silence, cutting time in half and making the taller man sound all of twelve.

"Why?" Dean repeated. "Because this life of yours—the life you said we both live—is nothing but…but _darkness_ and misery and," he curled slightly over his wounded arm, "a helluva lot of pain."

Sam was quiet. Dean could hear him breathing. Could feel himself breathing. Could sense how the rhythms matched, as though they'd fought their whole lives just to hear that sound. Just to match that rhythm.

"You're right," Sam finally replied. "It…there has been a…a _lot_ of pain. But…, Dean, you gotta know. There's been a lot of good, too. We've…we've done really good things for people. For the _world_."

For reasons he couldn't define, Dean's chest seized at that thought, the stabbing sensation spiking enough to make him gasp involuntarily. Sam noticed and instinctively reached out for him when a scream cracked open what was left of the night.

"Oh, shit," Dean breathed, taking a step back.

Sam looked up toward the opening in the cavern as another cry echoed down to them, this one weaker and much more…human.

"Was that…?"

"Get over here," Dean ordered, moving on muscle memory alone. "Get over here, get behind me."

"Are you nuts? You're barely on your feet!"

"Dammit, just do it!" Dean crouched slowly and grabbed up his weapon awkwardly in his left hand. A memory was trying to surface, pressing at the base of his skull with an ice pick, demanding to be examined, but he didn't have time.

Sam obeyed—finally—and just as he rounded the fire to stand at Dean's side, the Olitiau dove through the opening, straight down to the cave floor. The two men flinched away from the stir of debris, smoke, and ash kicked up by the beat of the creature's wings and Dean registered something falling from its talons just before it pulled its wings close and spiraled through the tunnel like a SCUD missile toward the other cavern.

"What the f—"

"There's something over there," Dean cut the other man off. "It dropped something."

Sam released the water bottle and grabbed up the small flashlight. Dean moved stiffly around the fire and they followed the beam of light to where the Olitiau had dropped its burden. Dean heard it before he saw it and his stomach clenched.

"It's a man," Sam breathed. He brought the back of his wrist up to his mouth. "Oh, hell…we know him."

Dean couldn't believe the man was still alive. Both of his legs had been ripped off at the knee, blood even now pooling beneath him. His torso and arms were slashed from the creature's talons, and a hole had been ripped through one cheek. His blue eyes were opened wide and terrified, unblinking against Sam's flashlight beam.

"Hey," Dean tried, crouching down and pressing his fingers against the man's cold, clammy neck. "Hey, man, look at me. Easy…easy, there."

The man's eyes tracked to Dean then and he saw them fill with tears. The man tried to speak, a garble of sound gurgling up through his throat and spilling blood from his white lips.

"Don't try to talk." Dean shook his head, rage burning the backs of his eyes. "It's okay. You can let go now."

The man's lips moved without sound and tears spilled from the corners of his eyes. Dean nodded and pressed his hand harder against the man's neck.

"You can let go."

The man's chest seized once and then Dean watched as the fear drained away and he grew still. For several seconds nothing moved, then Dean felt the weight of Sam's hand on his shoulder. It was both comfort and camaraderie, two men standing on the same side of chaos.

"We knew him?" Dean asked, sliding the dead man's eyes closed with the flat of his left hand, blood smearing like war paint on the man's cheeks.

"He was…I can't remember his name, but we questioned him. About the deaths in town. Before we narrowed it down to the Olitiau."

Dean swallowed, thinking of the fear in the dead man's eyes. The tears. "You know how to kill this thing?"

"Yeah," Sam replied. Then, "You told me."

"Maybe you should remind me, then," Dean reached up and grabbed the other man's strong right arm, pulling himself to his feet, looking Sam in the eye. "Because we are ending it. Now."

The beam of the flashlight tossed odd shadows across Sam's smile.

"What are you grinning at?" Dean pulled his brows together.

"Nothing. You…kinda sounded like my brother just then."

Dean looked down; he wasn't ready to like being favorably compared to this guy's brother yet.

"We can't leave him here," he said, nodding toward the mangled body. "Help me drag him over to where the cop is." He glanced up at Sam. "If you're right, and we do get out of here…someone's going to be missing this guy."

Sam nodded wordlessly and took one of the dead man's arms. Dean bent to do the same, but a knife of pain from his ribs pulled him up short, vision whiting out and a deafening hum echoing in his ears. He tried to take a breath but knew immediately if he so much as gasped his chest would erupt into flames.

He didn't register sitting, but the next thing he knew he was on his rear and Sam was crouched in front of him, resting a heavy hand at the back of his neck. The grip was grounding, strangely comforting, familiar. After a moment he was able to draw a thin breath, then another, enough to bring the world around him back into a hazy focus.

"'m okay, man," Dean muttered, rolling his neck to dislodge Sam's hand. "Leggo."

"You just sit here," Sam ordered. "Sit here and do not move."

Dean wanted to protest, but the marrow of his ribs had turned to magma and the noise of his own pulse was blocking out every other sound. He nodded numbly, focusing on finding the balance between breathing shallow and getting enough air he didn't pass out. He watched the bob of the flashlight as Sam dragged the body of the Olitiau's victim to the far edge of the cavern near where they'd left the cop, a trail of blood following in his wake.

As the beam of light left him behind, Dean raised his eyes to the wide crack in the ceiling of the cavern, far above him, waiting for the stillness of dawn noticed only by those who stood in the night and felt the world change around them with the coming of day. He didn't have the memories that Sam spoke of with complete conviction; he didn't _know_ the people Sam brought up with such casualness or the mission that seemed to rule the lives of these two brothers.

It was like listening to someone tell him the plot of a movie he'd starred in but hadn't seen.

Watching that man die sparked a slew of visceral emotions—retribution, resistance, a need for validation, a need to protect—within him until he wanted to reach in and rip them from his chest. There was something _right_ in what Sam was saying. Something that fit him, whoever he was. Even if he couldn't remember being a brother, he somehow knew he was a warrior.

"Hey," Sam greeted him, as he returned short of breath from the cave wall. "You okay?"

"Fine," Dean snapped. He shrugged off the other man's helping hand then pushed himself unsteadily to his feet.

"Before you say another word," he cautioned, damning his voice for wavering as his body betrayed him, "whatever we plan we come up with to get this Oil thing—"

"Olitiau," Sam corrected helpfully.

"—will _not_ involve me sitting by the fire waiting for you to come back after you kill it. Get me?"

Sam crossed his arms over his chest, a look of defiance sitting at home in his hazel eyes and the gray light of early morning turning his face pale.

"So, instead, you'd rather get yourself killed, that it?"

"Yes," Dean replied without hesitation.

Sam shook his head. "Damn if you're not the stubbornist son of a bitch, memories or no memories."

Dean wasn't sure what the other man meant by that, but he knew that he _had to_ be part of the fight that took the creature down. He simply could not be left behind—and he couldn't say why. It was a feeling so wrapped in edges it cut him with its very existence.

When Sam said nothing beyond shaking his head as though disappointed, Dean turned and made his way back toward where their fire had burned down.

He kicked some of the leafy debris toward the coals, catching a bright flame, and watched as Sam dropped more kindling and then some larger branches until the flame grew once more, heating the small space around them. The harness holding Dean's wounded arm close to his chest rubbed at his neck and he tugged at the strap, thinking.

"Those weird bullets kill it, right?" he asked, glancing askance.

Sam nodded, crouching down at their duffel and unbuttoning the jacket he still wore, exposing his bare chest to the chilly cave air.

"Lore says they can be killed by copper, but it's almost impossible to get close enough." He pulled his T-shirt over his head, wincing slightly with the movement, then tossed his hair out of his eyes as he looked back at Dean. "You gotta hit the heart."

Dean watched the other man add the rest of his layers, frowning when Sam paused to cough roughly into the crook of his elbow. It sounded wet, rattling. As though his lungs had been loosened somehow.

He didn't want to care about that. But there was something buried deep within him that bubbled up concern at the sound, at the hunched shoulders, at the way the other man had to pause to catch his breath.

"And we're assuming the heart is in the typical place?" Dean continued.

Sam nodded again, dropping to a seated position. "'Cept now…I mean, last night was the last night of the lunar cycle, so."

"So?"

"So…it's daylight. Thing's in its…lair or whatever." Sam flopped a hand toward the dark tunnel shadowed by the curve of the cavern opening.

"So, we call it out." Dean lifted his good shoulder, his mind turning, slipping, grabbing, grinding. He felt like a motor with a gear missing.

"Call it out." Sam dropped his chin, his eyebrows disappearing beneath his hair. "Y'know, this isn't some western, Dean. It's not pistols at dawn or whatever."

"Funny," Dean replied, rifling through the contents of the pack they'd dumped into a pile on the floor until he found what he was looking for. "Maybe it's time to make the monster play by our rules." He held up the whistle.

Sam's eyes flashed in the firelight. He leaned forward and slowly took the thin, silver tube from Dean's fingers.

"Dean, you are a goddamned _genius_."

Dean let the corner of his mouth bounce up at the compliment. "Bats use sonar, right? Even King Kong bats."

Sam nodded, picking up the line of thinking. "We set a trap, call it out, and bam. No more Olitiau."

"Kinda what I'm thinking."

Sam's grin was bright, lighting his face and loosening his shoulders until he looked almost boyish. Dean smiled back and looked away. He didn't want to like this kid. He certainly didn't want to care what happened to him.

But there was something….

"What kind of good things?" He asked suddenly.

"What?" Sam blinked at him, confused.

"You said there were good things in our life. What kind?"

"Oh, uh…well, we've saved the world. A lot." Sam lifted a shoulder in almost forced casualness, curling his fingers around the whistle.

"Right." Dean scoffed, easing himself down to lean wearily against the rock wall.

He started to carefully unhook the harness that was holding his broken arm in place, thinking through their plan. He didn't have to know about demons and ghosts and all that craziness to know that sheer physics were working against them. No way were two men going to take down that giant bat with a lucky shot without some serious strategy behind their approach. This was a modern-day David and Goliath. They were going to have to trap the beast first.

Without really being aware of it, he started to link the harness he'd removed from his arm with the second set of rigging lying on top of the pile of rope next to their pack. Sam watched him and quickly picked up on the net he was weaving. Grabbing the rest of the rope and the carabiners, Sam added them to the pile next to Dean.

"I'm serious," Sam continued, standing up and heading over to where they'd left the body of the cop. His voice echoed back through the cavern, ricocheting off the rock walls and pinging Dean with tiny pinpricks of truth. "I mean, first it was Hell's Gate in Wyoming. We stopped that from opening, but, uh…."

Dean looked over and saw by the dim light that Sam was wrestling the third harness off of the dead cop.

"That didn't end so well because you sold your soul to a crossroads demon to save my life and ended up going to Hell a year later."

"Didn't think that one through, huh?" Dean had to make light of the words Sam was tossing his way or he was afraid they'd shake him apart.

Sam returned, dropping the harness onto the pile. Dean tried not to grimace at the blood on the straps and on Sam's hands. Still deep in thought, Sam used the Holy Water from the flask to wash off the blood.

"We beat two Archangels and stopped them from bringing on the Apocalypse…only that ended up with _me_ going to Hell, so…." Sam glanced toward Dean and his expression flattened. Clearly some of the horror Dean was feeling at Sam's words was echoed in his expression. "Too much?"

"Maybe you and I have a different definition of _good_."

Sam sat down, drawing up his knees and resting his arms across them. "I guess maybe…the good things we did for the world always came at a price for us. Maybe that's why…."

When Sam didn't continue, Dean frowned, tilting his head to grab the other man's attention. "What?"

"We haven't exactly made the smartest decisions sometimes."

"Well, that's a relief." Dean dropped his head back until it was resting against the rock wall. "At least _we're_ human."

"What I mean is…we kinda made life harder for us…for _everyone_ because we couldn't—" Sam stopped again, glancing at Dean almost shyly, as though afraid to confess a sin. "We couldn't live with each other dead."

Dean pulled his bottom in, catching it between his teeth, processing that bit of information. "So I have you to thank for all these times you say I died, that it?"

Sam shot a surprised look at him.

"I mean, I clearly keep coming back, so…."

"You're mocking me," Sam realized.

Dean instantly felt contrite, but couldn't find his way out.

"It's okay, I get it," Sam said, letting him off the hook. "I can't say I'd believe me either. But just so you know…I died a couple of times, too."

A hard knot pressed against Dean's wounded ribs at those words.

"And you found a way to bring me back. Or keep me from the edge. No matter what, you kept me alive, even if it meant…," Sam shook his head, a muscle jumping along his jawline. "It's like we started out this ginormous piece of granite…but our life just keeps chipping away at it, turning us into a shape we never thought we'd be, never saw comin'. And we get smaller with each hit…but," he shrugged, looking at Dean with his cat-like eyes, "we're still granite."

"And this is the life you want to go back to," Dean asked, picking up a packet of beef jerky from their bag and taking several strips out before handing the packet to Sam. "This is the life you want me to remember. Where every good thing we do for the world takes away a piece of us."

Sam was quiet for a long moment. Long enough that Dean began to regret the harshness of his tone. Then the other man chuffed slightly and Dean looked over, surprised to see a lazy smile digging dimples into Sam's cheeks.

"The good stuff?" Sam started, then dipped his head forward so that his hair fell across his forehead and he had to toss it out of his eyes. "The _really_ good stuff? Has nothing to do with our jobs. It's just…it's _us_."

Dean frowned, confused. "Thought you said we were brothers."

"We are, that's my point."

Dean bit off a piece of jerky, waiting.

"It's like…listening to Zeppelin in the Impala—same damn song for the hundredth time and suddenly we're both signing along to it. Or…," Sam chuckled, eyes distant with memory, "camping out in a clearing because we can't find a motel and seeing the whole universe on display in the night sky above us. Or fast food on the road or pie in the motel room or beer on the trunk of the car or…hell, randomly catching a Jayhawks game because we're close enough to Lawrence."

"Jayhawks?" Dean tilted his head.

"It's a—" Sam waved his hand. "Forget it. All I'm saying is…our lives, man. _Us_. Being your brother. Growing up with you and fighting with you and for you and because of you. _That's_ the good stuff."

Something had begun to stir in Dean's chest, tight and hot like the remembered burn of tears.

"You should write for Hallmark," Dean returned, reaching for the water. But Sam was caught in the past and seemed intent on sharing, spiraling that burn to the base of Dean's throat then up behind his eyes.

"This one time…I think we were in Philly? We found this vacant lot. It was summer…I was like twelve, so you were just about sixteen."

Dean felt his brows meet over the bridge of his nose. He hadn't thought about their age difference. Who was older, who was younger. Their childhood together.

"Dad got this job at a garage for a while and we had this little studio apartment, only you were like…stir crazy. You convinced me to go on patrol with you. Keep the neighborhood safe."

"Geeze, sounds like I was a douche."

"Naw," Sam shook his head, closing his eyes and pressing a hand to his sternum as he cleared his throat. "You were just trying to keep us entertained. It's hard to go from hunting werewolves to sitting in a studio apartment watching a TV that only gets two channels," Sam opened one eye and looked at Dean, "and only one of them's in English."

Dean tilted his head at that, conceding the point.

"I remember we were out walking and we came across this empty lot with a basketball hoop—no net, just a hoop. We didn't have a ball, of course, but you said we could fake it." Sam opened his eyes, his gaze trained on the wide break in the ceiling high above them. "We used a rock. It clanged so loud against the backboard it echoed off the apartment buildings around us. We played until sunset. It was one of those perfect ones, you know?"

He rolled his head against the wall to catch Dean in his gaze and Dean found himself nodding in spite of himself. "The whole lot and all of the buildings turned this…this surreal red-gold and it was just the right temperature…just the right amount of wind…and you…Dean, you were laughing, man. I think I knew then it was something special, being able to see you laugh like that."

Dean looked down, the burn spearing the backs of his eyes. He suddenly _wanted_ to remember this. Wanted to remember _Sam_.

"Dad found us," Sam continued. "I remember he said he followed the swearing and clanging. He just leaned against the chain link fence, watching us. You remember how he was—" Sam started, then caught himself, glancing quickly at Dean. "Er, well. He had this way of just…studying us. Like he was looking for a weak point, some place we would need to guard later. But this time, man, he just…he just grinned, watching us until it was time to walk back."

Sam tossed a stick in the fire and Dean watched sparks from the coals fly upwards and die as the air overpowered them.

"That's the good stuff, Dean."

They were quiet, listening as the wind slip across the crack in the cave ceiling above, listening to the silence around them, listening to their own breathing.

"Tell you what," Dean said finally, looking over at the other man. "We kill this thing? I'll jump in that water myself."

Sam grinned, but didn't look back at him. "Deal."

* * *

 **a/n:** If some of you are thinking Sam's memory sounds familiar, but not "show" familiar, I pulled it from my story _Ramble On_ , which was posted back in 2006. I always liked that story.


	4. Over the Hills and Far Away

"So, how'd it…wake up or whatever?"

Sam was trying to figure out how to weave the three harnesses into something like a net that would catch the Olitiau long enough Dean could shoot it. Using his two hands turned out to be more efficient than Dean stumbling around with his one, but he knew it wasn't going to be enough for what they'd originally discussed.

He coughed into the crook of his elbow. "What?"

"C'mon, man," Dean was taking a break, cradling his wounded arm against his chest. "I've seen _Mothra_. I know how these monsters work."

Sam glanced up at him. "Mothra."

"Sure," Dean eased awkwardly forward, grabbing up a length of the rope, his voice tight as he continued, "Mothra, Godzilla, all of it. Something wakes the monster up after thousands of years of hibernation and then the army kills it after it destroys half of San Francisco or New York or Tokyo and we all learn a valuable lesson about not messing with—why are you looking at me like that?"

Sam was starting to feel oddly lightheaded, listening to his brother. "You just…you said that same thing before."

"Before when?"

"Back at the hotel when you found the lore about the—you sure you don't remember anything?"

Dean tilted his head, his frown genuine. "Nothing more than I've told you."

Sam sat back, draping an arm over his bent knee. "Huh. You think it…like wears off?"

"Hey, you're the Bruce Wayne of this outfit, pal," Dean shrugged.

Sam rolled his eyes and returned to trying to figure out how to make a large enough net with the supplies they had. "Funny."

"You never answered my question," Dean pressed and Sam glanced over quickly at the wheeze of air he could hear behind his brother's words.

Dean looked drawn, pale in the shadow of the cave, the blood drying on the side of his face standing out like an accusation. Keeping his right arm close to his damaged side, he was twisting the long climbing ropes they'd used to lower themselves into the cavern into a series of knots with one hand.

"What are you doing?"

"Rigging a safety harness," Dean replied, as if it should be obvious. "If we end up having to go in after that thing, I sure as hell don't want to fall off that ledge again."

"How the hell do you know how to rig a safety harness?" Sam straightened, carefully hefting the length of rope in his hand as he watched as Dean twisted the thick strands into loops with dexterous fingers and then pull the knots tight with his teeth.

"I _know_ you don't expect me to answer that," Dean replied, setting the rope aside and leaning his head back against the wall. "It's like… describing shadows. Or seeing something out of the corner of your eye."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't actually _remember_ , but then suddenly I'll…I'll see something and I can't tell if it's real or not 'cause it feels like…like a TV show I saw once or something."

"Like what?"

Dean closed his eyes, shaking his head and wrapping his left arm around his right, cradling his damaged side. "Okay, so, I see this black guy…and I get the feeling like I'm supposed to know him or something, but then he has these nasty teeth and all of a sudden," Dean opened his eyes and looked directly at Sam, "you're decapitating him with…I don't know barbed wire or something."

Sam swallowed hard. Gordon Walker. He remembered Dean collapsed in a heap, neck bleeding from where he'd been bit, and the crazy surge of demon blood-enhanced strength that had allowed Sam to end the vampire's life before it had taken theirs.

"That was real."

Dean sighed. "I was afraid of that."

"Guess it does wear off," Sam said. "Or maybe your body just processes the poison differently after being a demon."

Dean blinked at him, paling further. "Jump back. I was a _what_ now?"

Sam darted his eyes away, flopping the harness he'd been messing with into a pile. "Forget it. Listen, I don't think this is going to work."

"No, wait, you can't just—"

"Look," Sam snapped, thinking of the empty sound of Dean's mocking voice as he'd chased him through the halls of the bunker, trying to catch him, cure him. "If you want to know— _really_ know—then go wash that shit off in the pool down that tunnel."

Dean closed his mouth, narrowing his eyes. "Not all good stuff, huh?"

"You already know it's not."

A body bore evidence of its journey through scars, musculature, stance, movement, strength or weakness. But such evidence was inadmissible in the courtroom of the mind; all that mattered was how the journey was remembered, and how those memories capture each personal truth.

They were quiet for several minutes, not looking at the other man, the fire snapping through kindling the only noise in the cavern surrounding them.

"Someone had to wake it up," Sam finally answered Dean's question, his voice sliding against the quiet. "I remember finding out something about some kids exploring the caverns before they went missing, but I can't remember the details."

"No one controls it?" Dean asked, apparently conceding the point about his memory.

"I don't think so."

"'Cause I saw that movie, too, y'know. When they kill the monster but the _real_ evil is the totally human dude controlling it."

Sam felt the side of his mouth pull up in a helpless, sad smile. "Yeah, we've lived that movie, too."

A hitch in his chest caught him by surprise and he coughed roughly, trying to stifle the sound as his lungs rattled. He felt Dean watching him as he worked to get his breath back and didn't want the older man looking too closely—it wouldn't be long until he discovered the signs of fever that Sam was starting to feel creep up on him through aching muscles.

If Dean got his memory back, Sam knew there was going to be hell to pay for the fact that being dunked in a pool of cave water was enough to trigger a fever.

"Anything we _haven't_ crossed paths with?" Dean asked, taking a drink from one of their remaining bottles of water, then handing it to Sam.

"If there is, we don't know about it."

"Vampires?" Dean asked, a twinkle in his eye as if he were testing Sam.

"Uh, yeah," Sam bobbed his head in a nod, thinking again of Gordon Walker. Of Benny. Of Alex. "A few times. You actually got turned into one once."

Dean drew his head back. "What the hell? How'd you let that happen?"

"What?" Sam almost grinned. "I helped get the cure to turn you back."

"Oh, I bet that was tons of fun for me."

Sam winced, thinking of the way Dean had screamed in pain as the cure tore through him. "I wouldn't recommend a repeat." He glanced at Dean. "You were friends with one."

Dean arched an eyebrow. "Get out."

"I'm not kidding. You guys were tight. He saved your ass in Purgatory."

Dean chuckled slightly, sitting forward as he shook his head in disbelief. "You're telling me I, uh…not only went to _Hell_ , but I was in Purgatory….where I met a vampire?"

"You had to kill him, though," Sam said quietly. "To save me."

Dean was quiet long enough Sam thought he'd abandoned his twisted game of truth or…truth. He should have known better.

"Werewolves?"

Sam felt a strange sadness sweep him for a moment, remembering Madison's tragic eyes as he pulled the trigger. But then glanced at Dean and smiled, thinking of Garth. "Yeah."

"Don't tell me—I married one?"

Sam chuckled. "No…but we do _know_ one and he thinks you're swell."

"Ghosts?"

"Yep. Busted more than a few."

"Now, that's just sad."

"Hey, bustin' makes you feel good."

"You need to work on your ghost puns."

Sam just grinned and dug the last of their food from the pack, answering Dean as he continued with the supernatural baddies Hollywood had teased out for him.

"We haven't even gotten into the demons and angels part of the story," Sam informed him when he'd exhausted his list. "Dad taught us how to take out a lot of them; we learned the rest on our own."

"And we…we _like_ this life?" Dean pressed, looking genuinely puzzled.

Sam stared solemnly at this other man across from him, thinking of the moment he'd realized it wasn't about just getting through one last hunt and returning to his real life. _This is my life. I love it. But I can't do it…without my brother. I don't want to do it without my brother._

"Yeah," Sam replied with conviction. "We do."

He watched as Dean started to lean forward to grab the pile of harnesses Sam had been working with, then pause as a visible wave of pain washed over him. Frowning, Sam had to resist the urge to ease Dean back against the wall, suggest that he lie down. The bruising had been bad and he knew from experience how much broken ribs hurt. He glanced upwards toward the break in the cavern ceiling.

Killing the creature was only part of their problem.

"So, tonight, no full moon," Dean started, his voice like an over-stretched rubber band.

"That's right."

"And if we were to, say, just figure out a way out of here, that thing would head out next month to snack on more villagers."

Sam nodded. "Right again."

"And it's possible that those…kids might be still in here somewhere? The ones that woke that thing up?"

Sam frowned, watching his brother closely. "I doubt they're alive, but…yeah. It's possible."

"'kay."

Sam tilted his head. "What, Dean?"

"Well…just, I get it. Why you said we allow life to chip away at us." He exhaled slowly, a hitch in the sound and Sam saw his left hand shaking as he repositioned his broken wrist. "From what you've told me, doesn't sound like there's a lot of people in the world who know what you—well, _we_ —know. Who do what we do."

"Kill monsters?"

"Protect people. From the truth…," he glanced at Sam with tired eyes. "Or, well, from the consequences of the truth. This whole time…since you hauled me over that ledge…I've been feeling this…this _darkness_. Around us."

Sam flinched at his choice of words. "Well, we're trapped in a cave."

"It's more than that. It's…it's like darkness _inside_." Dean shook his head staring at some middle distance, distress plain on his face as though the words were slipping from his grasp. "And I don't want to be close to it. I'm…I'm _afraid_ to be," he whispered.

After a beat, he looked up at Sam and a familiar light shone in his eyes. "But, see, then you go and tell me stories about these two guys who kick some serious monster ass, and defy death because they've…I don't know…got work to do and I can't help but think…these guys, man. These guys stand in front of that darkness and…they stop it from becoming more powerful than the light."

For a moment, Sam just stared at his brother, silent. He took for granted that he knew Dean. He knew his brother liked his whiskey neat, his coffee black, and his Zeppelin loud. But there were times when Dean surprised him to such an extent, Sam wondered how many layers existed inside his brother beneath the ones he knew.

"Who needs memories," Sam managed around the lump lodged at the base of his throat, "when you've got Dean Winchester?"

Dean smiled softly. "I'd still like to remember you."

"You will."

The flames shifted and bent with a tunneling gust of wind and Sam looked up toward the opening at the roof of the cave as debris filtered down—more twigs, several leaves.

"Looks like a storm's moving in," he said.

Dean shifted forward and Sam heard him stifle a hiss of pain. "Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing."

"We need a new plan," Sam said, picking up the harnesses. "We're not going to be able to trap it with this."

"Can we slow it down?"

Sam tilted his head. "Maybe…if we can predict its flight pattern."

"We piss it off enough, we can _control_ its flight pattern," Dean said, using the cave wall as a brace and pulling himself to his feet.

"Do I want to know what you're thinking?" Sam frowned as he watched his brother fight for balance.

Dean's eyes were darting around the floor of the cavern, his lower lip caught between his teeth. "Think you can get like…six or seven sticks? Big ones, like for torches?"

Sam stood, coughing as he shifted elevation and noting how Dean's eyes shifted his way at the sound. "Torches?"

Dean nodded toward the tunnel. "It hunts at night, so…we're thinking it doesn't like the light, right? And the net was just going to keep it from getting out of the cave before we could kill it."

" _And_ keep it from killing us."

Dean waved a hand at him. "Semantics."

Sam arched a brow at his brother, waiting for Dean to continue.

"I say we fill that tunnel with light so it won't come back this way," Dean mimicked Sam's facial expression, "and trap it on the dark side."

"So, wait. You _want_ to go back into the…other side?" Sam asked, surprised, remembering Dean's earlier exclamation of resistance. "It's more like a grave over there than anywhere else down here!"

"Yeah, and from the way it smells, it probably _is_ a grave…so to speak," Dean rubbed at his wounded face gingerly, "but if we want to put this thing down, we don't have much of a choice."

Sam knew Dean was right. And he hated it. "I told you this hunt was a bad idea."

"You did?" Dean asked with genuine surprise. "Why didn't I listen to you?"

"You did, but," Sam shrugged his shoulders, "then someone else died and your argument was better."

Dean nodded, then started to turn away from the fire—presumably to gather the sticks for torches—and Sam saw the blood drain from his face. He moved quickly around the fire and grabbed Dean's elbow, catching the other man as his knees buckled.

"Don't make me sit down," Dean said, leaning weakly against Sam, his forehead against Sam's collarbone once more. Sam gripped the back of Dean's neck and could feel fine tremors skating beneath his brother's skin. "I sit down, I'm toast."

"You're pretty close to toast now, man," Sam muttered, balancing Dean, but not pressing him to sit. "Can I check your bandages?"

"Don't touch the wrist," Dean pleaded. "Swear to God. Don't even breathe on it."

Sam nodded. "Roger that. Avoiding the wrist. How about your ribs?"

"They're still broken." He didn't lift his head, but Sam felt his trembling begin to ease. "But, uh…I think one of 'em might've…stabbed me."

"Right."

Sam took a breath, stepping carefully away from Dean and out of the light shining in from the opening in roof of the cave. Filtered sunlight, turned a metallic hue from the approaching storm, hit Dean mid-chest and Sam used it to help him gauge how worried he should be. Pulling Dean's shirts out of the way, he swallowed at the sight of the darkening bruise.

"I gotta, uh…," he started as he reached hesitantly toward Dean's right side.

"Do what you ne—ah! Son of a _bitch_!" Dean flinched back roughly as Sam pressed against his lower right side. "Warn a guy!"

"I did!" Sam snapped, worry spiking. He didn't know how to tell for sure that there was internal bleeding, but the darkening bruise, the firmness beneath Dean's ribs, the pale, sweaty features…none of it looked good. "You want a countdown next time?"

"Go on three or something."

"Fine!"

"Fine!"

Dean swayed, reaching out to grab hold of Sam's arm to steady himself. "Just…wrap it up tighter."

"It looks bad, Dean."

Dean closed his eyes and rolled his neck. "Well, unless you have some miracle healing abilities you haven't bothered to mention yet, there's nothing much we can do about it."

Sam shot his eyes up to the hole in the roof. _Miracle healing abilities…._ Castiel. Could he hear them? He'd healed both of them easily after the…the ghoulpire. What if—?

"Dude."

Sam looked over at his brother. "What?"

"You having a private conversation with God or what?"

"We know an angel," Sam said.

Dean's grin was slightly drunken. "Isn't that a Scorpion's song?"

"He healed us, like, two weeks ago," Sam continued, looking up again. "I can't believe I didn't think about it before now."

"No, wait that's _Send Me An Angel_."

"But…I…," Sam rubbed his forehead. "I don't know how he'd get here, even if he can hear us."

"Why? His wings clipped?" Dean chuckled, then winced and coughed slightly, a groan echoing the sound.

"Well…yeah," Sam replied. "The angels fell when we didn't close the gates to Hell and—"

" _Dude._ "

"Right," Sam nodded. "Not the time."

He unwrapped the bandage from Dean's ribs, ignoring his brother's pained hiss. Trying to figure out if simply wrapping them tighter would slow any possible internal bleeding, he ordered Dean to brace himself against his shoulder and began to reposition the wrap.

"Here's the new plan," Dean said, breathless, stubborn, unrelenting. "We trap that bastard, kill it, you get out of here and go get help. I'll wait for that angel to heal me."

"I'm not leaving here without you," Sam shook his head, wincing as Dean grunted when he pulled the wrap tight enough it would be hard for Dean to draw a full breath.

"Yes, you are," Dean gripped his shoulder tightly for balance. "It's the only thing that makes sense."

Sam shook his head. "No."

"Look, I admire the loyalty, but—"

"Shut up, Dean. I'm not leaving you," Sam snapped, tying off the wraps. "I've had to do it too many times before, okay? I am _not_ …."

Dean was still gripping his shoulder, though Sam had dropped his hands from his ribs. He could tell Dean was searching for the right words that would convince him, but Sam was seeing an abandoned warehouse in Kansas City, an empty field in Illinois, a parking lot in Florida. He was seeing a hospital room and a Ouija board. He was seeing a faith healer. He was seeing a Spartan bedroom within a bunker.

"I _can't_ leave you," Sam whispered. "So don't say it again."

"You could die down here, you know. With someone who doesn't even remember you. And has zero clue how to bring you back," Dean ground out through gritted teeth.

"I know."

Dean swallowed roughly. " _Why_? _"_

"You're my big brother." Sam smiled slightly. "There's nothing I wouldn't do for you."

"Dammit," Dean muttered quietly. After several heartbeats, he nodded once. "Fine, then go get us some torches."

Making sure Dean was close enough to a wall in case he needed to balance once more, Sam set off to search through the debris. He found six branches that he could break down to make torches and reluctantly removed the cop's outer shirt to wrap around the tops to burn. He knew they couldn't sacrifice any of their own clothes if they wanted to stay warm enough in the coolness of the cave and the other victim's shirt was too shredded.

When he returned to Dean, he saw that his brother had been busy. The bandage adjustment must have done some good because he'd been able to get down at least to his knees and access the ropes and harnesses as well as turn their pack inside out.

"Torches," Sam declared, dropping the supplies in a heap.

Dean grinned up at him. "Pain killers." He rattled a bottle. "Found 'em in that jacket you were wearing."

Sam frowned. No wonder Dean was moving more easily; that was the bottle of Percocet they'd snagged from Mrs. Markham's house. He hadn't realized Dean had pocketed them…but he should have guessed. Or at least checked the jacket pockets when he had the damn thing on.

"How many of those things did you take?"

Dean lifted a brow, his grin deceptive. "Enough I don't keel over, but not so much I'll pass out, how's that?"

"You're a pain in the ass."

Dean winked at him, then handed him a complicated-looking rigging of rope and harnesses. "Try this on."

Sam frowned, turning the rope around in his grip. It didn't take long to realize that it went over his shoulders and around his chest. "How the hell...?"

"Okay, I don't _actually_ know, but…there's a name in my head and…the knots just made sense," Dean shrugged.

"What name?" Sam slipped on the harness, grimacing as the raw skin beneath his bandaged wrist rubbed against the ropes.

"Bobby."

"Of course," Sam murmured. The endless skills Bobby taught them—the way his brother watched every move the older hunter made—why wouldn't sailing knots been part of the lessons? "Why is there only one?"

Dean ducked his head, then glanced around Sam toward the opening of the tunnel. "I figure one of us has to be bait."

"Uh, no." Sam shook his head. "I told you—you're the better shot!"

"Look, man, I can't…the ropes, I can't with my arm…," Dean shook his head, his freckles standing out in the shifting sunlight. "I'll call the bastard out and you take the shot. This," he flicked at the rope, "will just make sure you can get close enough without visiting the _Abyss_."

Sam felt a cough climbing up through his battered lungs. Swallowing roughly, he turned away so that Dean couldn't see his frown shift from irritation to worry. It hadn't been that long ago when he felt the end of their story lurking close. The fevered weakness growing in his limbs now paled in comparison to the virus that had burned through him in Nebraska, but the same sense of inevitability was here, the same fear of never seeing Dean again.

"I don't like it." He cleared his throat and turned back around, a hand to his aching chest.

"You don't have to like it," Dean said, tucking his chin down, his eyes on Sam. "You just have to do it."

"Story of our lives," Sam sighed, the coalescing effect of his memory drawing up a sheriff's station in Colorado and a horde of demons slamming against the warded doors and windows, the impossibility of Eve, the Leviathan…. "Fine, okay. But be _careful_."

Dean's grin was quick and confident, a shadow of his former self lurking at the edges of his wounded eyes. "Hey, careful is my middle name."

"I _know_ your middle name," Sam huffed. "I only _wish_ it was 'careful'."

The wind picked up over their heads and Sam glanced up, noting the darkening of the cave as the clouds rolled in. He tried to remember where in the landscape above them the cave entrance was located—on a hillside? In a valley? But came up blank. He remembered preparing for the hunt and everything going south once they were in the cave, but prior to that—

"You ready?" Dean broke into his thoughts.

Sam looked at him, noting the way Dean held his broken arm close to his chest, the thin protection his gray T-shirt and flannel offered against the cool of the cave, the sureness in his movement as he slid the .45 into his back waistband. There was something terrifying and yet strangely reassuring about his brother's confidence in the face of a giant unknown.

"Let's get this over with," Sam grumbled, crouching down to grab up one of his sticks and wrapping the cloth around the top.

They didn't have anything to use as fuel, so the torches wouldn't burn forever, but if Dean's plan worked the way they wanted, they shouldn't need long. Once all six sticks were wrapped, each man took one and lit it, making their way toward the tunnel entrance. Sam hung back as Dean headed inside, searching the walls for a place to wedge the torch. Finding one, he headed back for Sam's torch as Sam made his way back to the fire to light two more.

They silently continued this assembly line until Dean had positioned the six torches along the inside of the tunnel nearly reaching the opposite end, leaving on a few pockets of darkness between the light. The gathering storm had turned the outer cavern near dark, their fire acting as a beacon of safety.

"Is it a bad thing that I'm almost used to the stench down here?" Dean asked as Sam made his way through the dimly lit tunnel—carefully avoiding the deep pocket of water that waited in near silence, flush with the surface of the cave floor—and joined his brother near the other end.

"Think that's a sign that we've overstayed our welcome," Sam replied gamely.

Dean pulled the gun from his back waist band and handed it over. Sam watched as his brother then fished out the flashlight from his pocket and shone it around the pitch-black cavern. Seeing around him better than when he'd used the cell phone light, Sam was amazed they hadn't crashed headlong into the several stalactites jutting down from the roof and branching off the walls.

He winced inwardly as the beam traced the body parts and near-intact corpses that he'd remembered seeing when they first climbed over the ledge. He wondered which of these bodies had once been the kids who woke the Olitiau, if they would ever be identified. If anyone was maybe looking for them right now.

"There," Dean said, shining the flashlight beam against a rock slightly above their heads with a portion broken away. "Throw the end of the rope up through there."

"What do you plan on doing with it?" Sam asked, as he complied, making the hole with the second toss.

"Dude, I'm making this up as I go," Dean shrugged finding the ledge with the flashlight. "Just trying to keep you from getting dumped."

Sam smiled. Dean shot him a curious glance.

"What?"

"You say you don't remember me, but…you're still protecting me."

Dean shook his head. "Don't read too much into it; you're my only way outta here."

"Uh-huh," Sam found a rock formation toward the base of the wall and tied the end of the rope around it, effectively harnessing himself to the cave itself. "Happy?" He nodded toward the knot.

"Thrilled," Dean replied through tight lips, the flashlight beam dipping a bit as he pressed his left hand against his ribs. "Okay, get that .45 ready."

Sam took a deep breath, stifling a cough, and lifted the end of the pistol toward the drop-off. "Why do I feel like Bilbo getting ready to fight Smaug over the Arkenstone?"

He felt Dean's eyes track to him. "Uh, 'cause you're a gigantic geek?"

"You read _The Hobbit_ more times than I did, jerk," Sam snapped, squaring his shoulders.

"Maybe I don't want to get that memory back," Dean muttered.

Sam blew his breath out, watching the weak shadows from the tunnel of torches dance across the floor by Dean's feet. "Call this thing already."

His back to the torch-lit tunnel, Dean blew on the thin dog whistle twice, then waited. It felt as though the cave around them held its breath, the stench of death in the cloistered air folding close around them. Sam saw Dean's shoulders heave as he blew on the whistle again, the frequency high enough that neither of them heard a thing.

Until a strange, guttural shriek echoed from the darkness.

"Here it comes," Dean warned, the whistle still trapped between his lips. He blew again and the answering shriek grew louder.

Sam adjusted his stance. Sweat rolled down his spine and collected on his upper lip. He felt his lungs seize up in his chest and swallowed hard, afraid to take his eyes off the darkness for even a second. He heard Dean take a strangled breath, heard the scratching of talons on rock, heard the darkness itself scream and suddenly he was facing two enormous amber eyes.

"Oh shit," Sam breathed, trying to sight on the creature's center point.

The Olitiau twisted its leathery wings around its body and headed toward the tunnel and suddenly Dean was crossing the debris-littered cavern in a stilted gait, moving away from the torch-lit tunnel, away from Sam, the beam of the flashlight bouncing in his grip, the whistle in his mouth. Sam knew his brother was blowing on the thing only because the Olitiau screamed in response, the air around him trembling from the sound.

"Dean! Watch out for the—"

He heard the creature spray its frigid saliva toward Dean and cried out as he tried to get a glimpse of where the liquid landed. The bob of the flashlight revealed Dean was still upright, still blowing on the whistle, still moving, though not quickly. The creature swooped low to follow Dean, wings sending the gore and guano that littered the cave floor tumbling around Sam.

"Shoot it!" Dean yelled around the whistle.

Another spray of saliva splattered noisily against the wall and Sam knew his brother wasn't going to avoid impact long.

"I can't see, dammit! Can't get a shot!"

"Here!"

Sam turned and thrust out his right hand, somehow knowing instinctively that Dean would throw him the flashlight. He held it in his left, balancing the .45 in his right and aimed the beam at the massive creature, currently hovering over the abyss, it's broad, leathery wings wreaking havoc around them. Sam shot once, the sound of the ricochet telling him he'd missed his target. The Olitiau screamed and seemed to twist, diving away from Sam, away from the light, toward the center of the cavern where it hung from the thick stalactites beating its wings.

"Dean!"

He couldn't see him, couldn't hear him, all he caught with his flashlight was a blurred image of wings and talons and debris-filled air. Hurrying along the ledge toward where he'd last seen Dean heading, ever conscious of the tether of his rope, Sam sought the amber eyes of the creature, needing to get to its heart to end all of this.

It was then he saw Dean, standing pressed against the far wall of the cavern, the mutilated body of one of the Olitiau's victims near his feet, fury in his eyes. He was blowing on the silver whistle for all he was worth, the creature zeroing in on him, clearly needing the sound to stop.

"Come at me, you son of a bitch!" Dean rasped, panting as the whistle fell from his lips, unable, it seemed, to gain enough air to blow on it any longer.

The Olitiau complied and before Sam could shout in protest, it swept at Dean, catching his brother up in the blade-like grip of its talons. Dean's scream was raw—rage more than pain—cutting through the air as the creature twisted to return to its lair, Sam the only thing between it and home.

"Shoot the bastard!" Dean gasped, unable to struggle, his pale face barely discernible in the narrow flashlight beam.

Sam blinked sweat from his eyes, tracking the Olitiau's jerking movements. "Dean!"

" _Shoot it_!"

Sam held his breath, sighting along the flashlight beam, and fired. He emptied the clip, his jaw clenched so tight he was surprised he didn't break his own teeth. The Olitiau screamed, louder and longer than before, its wings beating desperately against the air, one crashing against Sam so hard it knocked the air from his lungs even as he scrambled to keep his footing. He tasted blood in his mouth, his chest and shoulder flaring with a sudden heat as though he'd been dragged across gravel.

The creature hit the floor of the cave heavily, its head falling back as the amber eyes dimmed. Sam went to his knees, instinct demanding he scramble away from the ledge, but before he made it two feet, the creature's legs crashed into him with its death throes and he was falling.

Dean's harness worked perfectly; seconds after losing purchase, Sam was jerked to an abrupt halt, an arm's reach from the edge of the cliff.

He gasped, crying out briefly from the shock, the flashlight and gun falling from his grasp. As the Olitiau tumbled over the edge of the cave floor and into the abyss, Sam reached out with nothing but desperation to guide him and snagged Dean by the collar of his shirt, ripping him from the grasp of the dead cave demon.

Both brothers cried out as Dean was released, and Sam felt the older man reach up with one hand, grabbing Sam's wrist and clinging for dear life. For a moment nothing moved; the only sound Sam could hear was their rasping gasps of breath, the slam of his own heart, and the scrape and creak of the taut rope as it rubbed against the rock ledge.

Then Dean's grasp began to weaken.

"Hang on," Sam gasped. " _Jesus, Dean, don't let go_."

Dean didn't reply, but Sam felt his grip tighten once more.

"I'm close to the ledge, okay? I just gotta…." He tried to pull Dean up with the arm his brother clung to, but his muscles trembled. Forcing himself to trust that the rope would hold, he released his grasp on the ledge, tipping forward in the harness Dean had constructed, and reached down for his brother with his other hand. "'m gonna pull you up to me, 'kay?"

Dean still didn't respond and Sam forced himself not to panic when he felt Dean's grip loosen once more.

"Hey, no no no. Don't you do that. You go, I go."

Dean held on, but it was loose and Sam could feel him trembling.

"Gonna, pull you up, now, okay?"

Sam puffed out three breaths, then with one hand tucked under Dean's shoulder and the other at the back collar of his shirt, he pulled upward, his growl of effort echoing dully on the walls around them and swallowed by the dark pit below. He nearly whimpered with exhaustion when he managed to get Dean to waist level and pressed his brother against the wall with his legs in order to adjust his grip. Dean seemed to come around enough to help out again and grasped Sam's arm, his broken wrist hanging limply at his side.

Hauling upward once more, cursing loudly as his brother's weight pulled at his exhausted arms, Sam gasped as he managed to get Dean face-to-face with him, holding him against the rock wall with nothing but his desperate grip and the weight of his own body, praying to anyone or anything listening that the rope harness held. He couldn't see his brother's face in the darkness, but he could feel Dean's harsh puffs of breath against his cheek.

"You with me?" Sam rasped.

"Yeah." The reply was weak, breathy, but there.

"Okay, _stay_ with me," Sam implored.

"You did it," Dean gasped. "Nailed the bastard."

"Save the confetti for when we're not hanging over a hole to the center of the Earth," Sam's reply was strained. "'kay, gonna need you to reach up, grab the rope, man."

"Can't…."

"No, you're gonna do this." Sam pressed his forehead against the side of his brother's head, Dean's short hair tickling his skin. "You're _gonna_ do this…and we're getting the hell out of this tomb."

"Yeah. Okay."

"Okay," Sam nodded, his forehead rubbing against Dean's hair with the motion. "Okay."

It was slow, awkward, and painful, but he managed to get Dean turned around to face the wall and help his brother get a grip on the ledge. As he pushed at Dean's legs to get him over the top, Sam heard a strangled, wet cough emanating from his brother that sent his heart rate into overdrive.

Reaching up to the top of the ledge, using the rope harness as leverage, Sam thought about his dreams, the messages that God was sending him, the path he was clearly supposed to be following. He refused to believe they'd been saved from certain death only to have it end now.

This way. In this place.

His prayer was desperate and instinctive. _Please…someone somewhere…we could really use your help_.

Arms shaking as he swung his leg upwards to solid ground, Sam focused on the one being he knew would come through no matter what, if he could. _Cas…if you can hear me…if you can get to us…please…we're running out of time, man._ Dean _is running out of time._

"Hey," Sam croaked, pushing himself to his hands and knees and reaching through the darkness for his brother. "Hey, you still with me?"

"Ropes held." It barely sounded like Dean's voice, the way it trembled.

"Yeah, man," Sam nodded in the darkness. "You're gonna have to teach me how you did that."

"You were bad ass," Dean continued, his voice growing stronger as admiration laid a foundation for the sound. "Dirty Harry's got nothin' on you."

Sam grinned. "You ready to get outta here?"

"Think I'll just lay here a minute," Dean said on a rough sigh. "'s kinda nice in the dark."

"Aw, no, you don't," Sam crawled closer, finding Dean's head, then chest with his tapping fingers. His stomach clenched when he felt a rather large wet patch on Dean's lower right side. "Not leaving you here. Remember?"

Dean was quiet a moment and Sam had to use it to catch his own breath. He couldn't quiet the cough that clawed through his chest any longer and felt his lungs curl up as he hacked roughly, willing the water that stubbornly remained to expel.

"I really read _The Hobbit_?" Dean asked in the quiet that followed.

Sam chuffed. "Only about a hundred times. You said you liked the whole…unlikely hero, impossible odds kind of thing."

"Huh."

"If it makes you feel any better," Sam said, finding his brother's shoulders and helping him sit up, "you graduated to _Busty Asian Beauties_ when you were like…seventeen."

"Oddly, yes," Dean replied, gasping as Sam tugged him to his feet. "That does make me feel better."

The last part was strained and Dean leaned heavily on Sam as they moved slowly through the darkness toward the rapidly dimming glow of the torch-filled tunnel, stumbling awkwardly around the carnage left behind by the Olitiau. Sam made Dean pause when they reached the tie-off of the rope and found he had to use the knife in his boot to cut the tether free, coiling the length of rope around his shoulder rather than leaving it behind.

He still had no idea how they were going to get out of there.

Dean waited for him, leaning against the cave wall until Sam was able to ease an arm under his left side and guide them both through the tunnel. Sam could smell rain and knew the storm that had been threatening had finally landed. He was hoping their fire was still burning—he couldn't tell which of them was shivering more at this point—when Dean suddenly stumbled a bit near one of the dying torches, causing Sam to heft him upright.

"Hey…where?"

He flinched at the sound of Dean's wrecked voice. "I'm right here, man."

"I don't…." Dean was looking around, his pale features echoing confusion in the flickering torchlight.

Sam paused, looking at his brother with concern. "You with me, Dean?"

Dean rested a blurry-eyed gaze on Sam's face, his frown puckering the open wounds on his face. "You're bleeding."

Sam wiped at his cheekbone with the back of his hand, remembering how the Olitiau's wing had clipped him.

"Yeah."

"We're still in the tunnel…," Dean's fingers dug into the meat of Sam's shoulder where he held himself upright, his brows drawing close.

Sam swallowed, feeling emotion tightening his chest at Dean's disoriented questions. "Yeah, we're heading back to that cavern, remember? The Olitiau's dead and we…we're gonna figure out how to get out of here." He exhaled. "Somehow."

They moved forward a bit more, away from one torch and toward another.

"How bad?" Dean asked, sounding for a moment like _Dean_. Like he remembered the life and reality that Sam had been sharing with him for the past several hours.

Sam winced as the skin across his chest burned. "Uh…think _bad_ …then multiply by two."

"Oh, good," Dean nodded, sighing a bit. "For a minute there, I thought we were in trouble."

For reasons he couldn't begin to articulate, Dean's statement hit Sam just right and he started to laugh. Weak at first, then with growing strength as he guided Dean through the tunnel, the sound echoing almost eerily against the rock walls. He maneuvered them around the pool of icy water and toward the tunnel entrance, trying to get a grip on his ricocheting emotions.

His grin wavered, though, when he reached the pale light of the opened cavern, water pouring in through the break in the cave roof and thick clouds shading the late afternoon sunlight. The rain that had been threatening earlier now fell directly into the cavern and collected at one edge of the crevasse, creating a bit of a waterfall, the splatter of the watery impact spraying both men as they lingered in the tunnel entrance. Sam blinked the water from his eyes and got a good look at both of them.

Blood was smeared across his shoulder and chest from where the Olitiau's wing had scraped away his clothes and reached skin. None of the abrasions were deep, but all of them stung like hell. His forehead and cheek throbbed and his felt his chest tightening with another cough.

Dean was pale as before, but Sam could now see that the wet patch he felt earlier on Dean's side, just beneath his ribs, was clearly from the creature's grip. He couldn't tell how badly the talon had cut him, but it was bleeding freely, staining Dean's shirt and jeans, soaking up through the bandage around his ribs.

"It's raining," Dean rasped.

"Yeah," Sam nodded, seeing with dismay that the fire had been reduced to coals in their absence.

Most of the debris that had fallen in from the opening was wet; a frothy river had formed and was spilling from one end of the cavern toward the other, slipping through cracks in the cave wall that apparently fed the pool of water Sam had fallen into earlier.

He pulled Dean forward into the rain, thinking to get them across to the other side and find some kind of shelter from the blowing wind and rain, but found that the breadth and angle of the opening overhead denied them any respite. When they reached what had once been their fire, Dean's knees disappeared and he sagged in Sam's grasp. Easing him down and against the wall near their emptied pack, Sam gingerly wiped the rainwater from his own eyes.

Trying not to look directly at Dean, Sam pulled the rope from his shoulder and unhooked the harness, dropping it to the ground and stepping free. His shoulders and chest ached where the ropes had caught him, but he was thankful for that pain. Without it, they would have joined the Olitiau at the bottom of that abyss.

As it was—

Sam's thought process scattered as a harsh cough bent him in half and he felt his skin shudder from the force of it. They were in trouble; he knew that. Dean had known it a long time ago. This was not something they were going to be able to fight their way out of—and he couldn't help but be bowed by the unfairness of it all.

Crouching down next to where Dean sat slumped against the wall, rainwater sluicing the dried blood from Dean's hair and face and smearing the new blood on his gray T-shirt, Sam tried to ignore his brother's shivering. Dean was so pale his freckles were visible in the near-darkness, his eyes stood out like beacons of pain, and Sam could see blood staining his pale lips.

 _The next time you or your brother bite it, you're not going to Heaven or Hell…we're gonna make a mistake and toss you out into the Empty. And nothing comes back from that._

Sam cupped his head in his hands, feeling the rain on the back of his neck. They'd made it through so much… _so much_. And Billie's promise weighed heavily on him, because this time, it was done. Over. And it wasn't _fair_. He'd recently survived a zombie-like virus because God had shown him a path out.

Yet here they were, wounded, trapped in a fucking _cave_ , and Dean didn't even know who he—

"Sammy?"

Sam caught his breath. He didn't want to move. It had been so long since he'd heard his name in his brother's voice he almost _couldn't_ move. Emotion sat hot and heavy in his chest, pressing his heart against his ribs and threatening to choke him.

Sucking the rain from his lips, Sam cautiously lifted his head and looked through the gloom at his brother.

"I remember you," Dean whispered, his green eyes large in his wounded face.

Sam blinked, for a moment not daring to believe. He looked up at the crack in the ceiling above them, the rain splashing into his eyes, then back down at where Dean sat slumped and bleeding against the cave wall, rain plastering his hair to his head, soaking him to the bone.

"I remember you," Dean repeated, a tremulous smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.

Sam slumped forward to his knees, a sob clutching at his throat and swallowed by the storm. He sank forward, folding in on himself as his tears blended with rain on his face. A shuddering huff of sound that was almost a laugh slipped around the lump in his throat as he stared at his brother.

"It's about time," he managed.


	5. Don't Fear the Reaper

The rain fell hard and fast, wind swirling around the cavern like a wild thing caught in a trap. It saturated Dean's clothes, chilling his skin, stinging the open cuts on his face, and apparently washing him free of the amnesic properties of the Olitiau's saliva. Sam sat shivering next to his outstretched legs and Dean knew he should be doing something, saying _something_ , but he couldn't find anything that fit beyond… _remember_.

 _Family don't end with blood, boy_.

Sam reached out a trembling hand, gathering up Dean's left one in his chilled grip as though simply needing the contact, but Dean was swimming, lost inside himself. Instead of the orange and brown walls of the cave, he was seeing Bobby, his face determined as he stood stalwartly next to Castiel in the middle of Stull Cemetery and fired the Colt, trying desperately to save Dean from Lucifer's attack.

 _They say you can't protect your loved ones forever…but I say screw that, what else is family for?_

He was seeing Jo, her young eyes determined as her life bled out of her from the Hellhound wounds. He was seeing Ellen, unwilling to leave her daughter's side as she told him to _kick it in the ass_.

"Dean, you with me?" Sam's voice barely permeated the haze around him, memories sinking into him with the rain water.

His wrist ached, his body shivering enough that it jostled the broken bones. His felt the hand that Sam gripped twitching, remembering the weight of a sawed-off shotgun, the lead that seemed to travel up his arms as he watched the first creature die by his hands.

Then it was a knife. And a throat. And fire. And water. And screams and blood and death and—

"Keep seeing it…," Dean whispered, rainwater splashing from his lips.

"What?"

"All of it." He shuddered. "'s like a movie…."

His hands, a glint off a blade, a man burning from the inside, streams of black smoke shooting from a gaping mouth.

"C'mere, man," Sam muttered and Dean allowed himself to be shifted as Sam pulled him close against him, his brother's big hand resting on top of Dean's head, his back against Sam's chest.

"It doesn't feel real," Dean whispered. "It…it can't _all_ be real."

Sam nodded and he felt his brother's chin rub against the top of his head.

He knew Sam was scared, hurt, tired, but he couldn't focus on anything but the overwhelming surge of images crashing into him like waves. Sam on his knees in Cold Oak, blood soaking his back. Sam in a panic room, eyes red-rimmed and desperate. Sam channeling the power to banish demons, slamming his fists against Dean's face, staring at him with soulless eyes, staring at him with tear stains on his face.

Sam angry and devastated, laughing and relieved, tear-stained and broken.

"Son of a bitch," Dean muttered, feeling a stab of pain in his side as though his ribcage was shrinking away from his skin.

Rain fell, the cave frothed up a river thick with dirt, wind whipped down into the cavern, pulling at both of them, and Dean lay helpless in his brothers arms, blind to everything except his past.

 _You're gonna die, Dean. And this is what you're gonna become._

Battles fought on Earth bent and twisted into memories of the Hell, then folded into Purgatory. Blinking away those images only brought up others, dancing before his eyes like a macabre scrapbook of his failures and accomplishments. Of his sin and salvation.

 _I've got a hell of a lot more running through me than just demon juice._

He felt the power of an angel's sight, staring down Zachariah as he shoved the blade through the angel's chin. He felt the healing relief of Castiel's touch as his friend repaired the wounds the world pressed into his skin. He felt the rush of release as his eyes turned black and he moved through the world like the edge of destruction.

 _You don't know what I've done…I might have it coming._

"Easy, Dean," Sam was saying.

Dean could feel his brother's words rumble from his chest, feel Sam's hand press against the bleeding hole on his side. He gasped at the pain, but it was detached, removed, as though it were happening to someone else.

Someone not consumed by a lifetime of memories downloading in minutes.

"Breathe, okay? It's a crazy rush, I know," Sam's voice was a constant hum in his ear, a reminder that he wasn't alone, "but it'll be over soon. Just breathe through it."

Sam had already lived this, Dean remembered suddenly. Had been forced to recall the insanity of their lives alone, Dean staring at him like a stranger. He wanted to twist around and acknowledge that, apologize even, but he couldn't because he was seeing Chuck and Adam and Anna. He was seeing Kevin stubbornly working to translate the Enochian writing on the angel tablets. He was seeing Charlie's grin and grit and her broken body sprawled in a motel bathtub.

 _Read the Bible. Angels are warriors of the Lord. I'm a soldier._

He was seeing Castiel's calm eyes and the shadow of his wings against impossible lightning. He was seeing the spirit of his mother stopping a ghost from strangling Sam. He was seeing his father's tearful smile as he leaned across a hospital bed. He was seeing gravestones… _so many_ gravestones.

"It's okay," Sam was saying, his arms pulling Dean close and it was only then Dean realized he was visibly shaking, his body unable to process the rapid download of his life. "It's okay, Dean."

"There's…it's so much," Dean tried, thinking of his father.

Of miles and miles of road and waking up in strange motel rooms and walking the halls of unfamiliar schools. Of friends who taught him the right way to sharpen a knife and how to make a silver bullet.

Of reading directions on cartons of food to learn how to cook and getting drunk before he was legal to drive just so he could block out the bad dreams. Knowing how to rebuild the engine of the Impala and yet failing geometry.

"How is this our life?" He heard the hitched sob catch his words and trap them close.

He tried to do what Sam said and breathe, but there was suddenly a small man with an angel blade crouching over him and the sharp, clean pain of dying. And waking to a world viewed through the eyes of a demon. Sam injecting him. Fire chasing itself beneath his skin.

"…hang in there, Dean," Sam whispered. "It's all real, okay? It's all real and it's all us. Just…hang in there."

"Proud of us," Dean choked out, tears burning his eyes and searing his broken body.

"What?" He felt Sam pull back, leaning slightly away. "What did you say?"

The rain began to taper. He felt the rush of water within the cave slow as he blinked rain from his lashes and tried to shift so he could see Sam.

"I mean it."

"You said that before," Sam reminded him and he saw then that the red in Sam's eyes wasn't from rainwater and that tears cut tracks through the dirt and blood on his brother's cheeks. "You said it before you died."

Dean nodded. "Meant it then, too."

"Okay, but…," Sam pressed his lips close, swallowing roughly and Dean realized he could feel heat shimming up from his brother's body. "No repeat performance, okay?"

Dean nodded. "Okay."

"You remember everything?"

 _Everything isn't your responsibility._

"Think so. Maybe?" He exhaled shakily as Sam shifted the hand pressing on his wounded side.

"The good stuff, too?"

 _You can't save everyone, my friend. Though you try._

He was quiet, thinking about Sam's recollection of their time in Philadelphia. Thinking of time spent as brothers that didn't involve hunting, killing, death. Thinking of those they managed to save.

The heel of Sam's hand pressed down as his brother tried to slow the flow of blood and Dean arched his back slightly in reaction, unable to stifle the automatic groan of pain. He felt cold, _achingly_ cold. It slid beneath his skin and settled inside and caused him to tremble.

"We gotta get outta here, Sammy," he said instead of answering his brother. "We can't stay here—"

"I know."

Sam shifted from behind him, helping him slump back against the wall. Dean saw that his right hand was wet with blood and he tried not to think about what that meant for him.

"Put your left hand here," Sam ordered, guiding Dean's hand to his side, then pressing his palm against the wound. "Just…just hold your hand here, okay?"

Dean nodded weakly, feeling the break in his skin with numb fingers, the worrisome warmth of blood on his cave- and rain-chilled skin. Moving to their sodden pack, Sam began rifling through their pile of supplies while Dean simply lay still and breathed.

"You're sick, aren't you?" Dean rasped, calling his brother on the heat he'd felt when lying against him.

"'m fine."

"Bullshit."

Sam shot him a look, practically snarling, "Does it matter?"

Dean started to bite off a reply when Sam dropped his head forward, the coughing fit racking through him.

"It's that cave water," Dean guessed. "And…," he squinted, remembering something just before they'd headed to the cave. "Dammit, Sam."

"It was my choice," Sam uncurled, crawling forward through the puddle of water surrounding them with wet socks he'd pulled from the pack in his hand. "Okay? _My_ choice."

Dean gasped, cursing liberally as Sam used the socks to press against the bloody wound on his side. The pressure turned his ribs inside out and his eyes fluttered closed involuntarily in reaction, a memory sliding over him like silk.

...

" _So, Larkin is going to lead us out to the—what is wrong with you?"_

 _Sam darted a guilty look his way. "Nothing."_

" _Uh, I've seen nothing and it looked completely different._ That _looks like aspirin."_

 _Sam tossed the white pills into his mouth and took a pull from the water bottle in his hand before slinging the straps of the duffel bag over his shoulder._

" _Just have a headache. It's nothing."_

 _Dean narrowed his eyes as he shoved an extra clip of marked bullets into his jacket. "Cas just healed us, dude."_

" _That was weeks ago. It's not like it's magic, Dean."_

" _It's actually_ exactly _like that." Dean grabbed his FBI badge, quickly checking the one that Sam flashed at him to make sure he'd selected the right one. Wouldn't do for Larkin to suspect they weren't who they said they were half-way to the cave. "Is that why you didn't want to go into the cave? 'Cause you're sick?"_

" _I'm_ not _sick," Sam protested with a huff and a roll of his eyes. "I'm fine. It's nothing. Let it go."_

 _But Dean had his teeth in it now and wasn't ready to give in quite yet. He followed his brother from the hotel room to the Impala, sliding behind the wheel and waiting until Sam slammed his door shut before continuing._

" _You weren't a fan of this hunt from the jump," Dean pointed out, starting the engine. "Were you sick back at the bunker?"_

" _Oh my_ God _."_

" _I thought you sounded funny when we were interviewing Larkin the other day."_

 _Sam twisted sideways in his seat as Dean backed away from the hotel, one hand out for emphasis. "Look. I didn't want to go on the hunt because the idea of a giant cave bat just sounded stupid."_

" _Uh, if by_ stupid _you mean_ awesome _, then I'm totally with you."_

" _And I sounded funny when we were interviewing Larkin because the crazy dude he was booking at the time smelled like…bologna."_

 _Dean wrinkled his nose. "Yeah, he was pretty ripe."_

 _They drove for a few seconds in silence. Then, "So you're not sick."_

" _Dean, I swear to God—"_

" _Because if you need to sit this one out—"_

" _I'm not sitting it out. I have a headache. And if my pain in the ass brother would shut the hell up, it'll go away."_

 _Dean couldn't suppress his grin. The drive to the rendezvous point with Larkin—way the hell out in the middle of Nowhere, Appalachia—was silent save the static-filled music from the radio. Dean parked in front of the sign that read_ Vespertilio Caverns, 4.5 miles _and sighed. Sam didn't give him a chance to make a comment, though. When they got out of the car and Sam once more shouldered the duffel, Dean stole a quick look at his brother, trying to assess if he actually should be worried. Sam could still play him every once in a while._

 _His brother's Fed-worthy smile when Larkin climbed out of his pick-up truck convinced Dean that Sam was right: it was nothing._

" _Ready to track this bastard?" Dean called over the roof of the Impala._

 _Larkin looked at both of them with narrowed eyes, then nodded, his expression grim and suspicious. "Just hope you're right about it being some kind of creature killing people 'round here and I'm not leaving a crazed serial killer running loose in my town while we're wandering around the Vespertilios."_

" _Larkin, you gotta trust us," Dean said, leveling steady eyes on the man._

" _Son," Larkin replied, "I don't trust my priest. I sure as shit ain't gonna trust some pretty-boy FBI Agent who says some creature is eating people in my town just 'cause he says so."_

 _Before Dean could shoot back the retort simmering at the back of his throat, Sam broke in._

" _Sherriff, do you know what Vespertilio means?" He pointed to the sign at the start of their apparent path._

 _Larkin shook his head, his lips thinning._

 _Sam lifted his chin, the solid confidence of his reply Dean's reassurance that all was well._

" _It's Latin for bat."_

 _..._

"You really were sick, weren't you?" Dean rasped.

Sam sighed, shifting his grip on the wet socks he was using as compression against Dean's side. "I didn't think so, but—"

"Should've had Cas heal you," Dean broke in, pulling away slightly in an automatic reaction to the pain cutting through him at Sam's ministrations.

"We don't need Cas for that kind of stuff," Sam protested, shoving his wet hair from his face and scrutinizing Dean with narrowed eyes. "We need him for _this_ kind of stuff."

Dean looked down at his side and saw that the socks were bright red where Sam had been using them to apply pressure.

"Bastard took a chunk outta me, huh?"

"It sure ain't good." Sam's voice was tight with worry, the cough that followed his statement shaking his whole frame.

Dean reached up a trembling hand and wiped the rainwater from his face. He could feel his body quaking from more than the cold. Between the broken ribs, the probable concussion, and now the wound on his side, he was running short on reserves. He recognized the signs of shock; sitting in a growing pool of rainwater wasn't the best way to combat his body shutting down around him.

"Climb outta here, Sam."

"Don't be an idiot."

"I mean it," Dean reached forward and curled his fingers in Sam's jacket. "Use those ropes and get outta here."

"Shut up."

"You c-can…can get back to the Impala…get help…."

" _Shut up!_ " Sam's bellow caused Dean to jerk and drop his hand, wincing as his ribs stabbed him. "I am not having the same goddamn conversation with you every time we—" Sam stopped and Dean thought he was going to cough again, but he just looked down at Dean's wounded side and shook his head, pressing the make-shift bandage against the wound harder in an effort to stop the bleeding. "Do you know how many times you've made me watch you die?"

Dean closed his eyes.

"How about how many times you've stayed behind so you could die with me?"

Dean simply swallowed, blinking rain from his eyes. He remembered.

"You think…think it was _easy_ watching you remember the time you…," Sam swallowed, tilting his chin to the side but still not looking at Dean, "you climbed out of your own grave and know I wasn't there?"

Sam pressed harder on the wound and Dean groaned, covering Sam's hand with his own.

"Easy, Sammy."

"I gotta stop the bleeding," Sam sniffed. "If I can stop the bleeding, then maybe—"

"'s okay, man." He just needed Sam to stop, for the pain to ease, for just a minute. Just one minute.

"It's _not_!" Sam shoved his free hand through his hair and Dean saw where the bandage around his wounded wrist had become saturated. "It's…it's _real_ this time, Dean."

"What—?"

"If we don't get out of here, there's…there's no Hell. Or Heaven. Or Purgatory." Sam sniffed again and Dean's gut clenched in reaction to the tears he saw in his brother's eyes. "There's…there's _nothing_ for us. After all we…we fought for. All we've done. It's just…over."

Dean pulled a slow breath in, trying to settle the slow spin of the world around him. He felt oddly weightless, his body at once hollow and filled with ice.

Sam's voice cracked, tears choking him as he said, "We die in a cave, buried in the middle of the Earth, just because we had to kill some goddamned giant bat."

"No," Dean shook his head, blinking slowly. "No, man. You listen to me, okay? You listening?"

Sam dragged the back of his hand beneath his nose and nodded.

"If we don't make it out of here, we die _saving people_. We die hunting things. We die doing our _job_ , Sam."

He stared hard at his brother, the edges of his vision graying out, but Sam stayed sharp, clear, lit from above by the growing sunbeams cutting through the passing rain clouds. The temporary waterfall began to slow, the frothing river through the center of the cavern still tripping its way to the cave wall. The stretching light of the afternoon sun climbed slowly down the reddish walls and lit the sweep of copper and black that surrounded them.

For several minutes, the brothers simply looked at one another.

"Think anyone'll put that on our tombstone?" Sam grumbled.

Dean smiled slightly. "We won't have one, Sammy."

Sam wiped his face dry, scooting closer so that he could adjust the pressure of the bandage on Dean's side. "Viking funeral, right?"

"Send me off...on the hood of the...Impala." Dean forced his lips to tip up in a confident grin.

Sam's answering grin faded quickly as he pushed Dean's shirt up and re-folded the sock bandage. "What am I supposed to do, Dean?" he whispered, hazel eyes seeking reassurance.

Dean felt his face fold with a pain separate from anything the Olitiau visited upon him. For a brief moment, all he could see was Sam lying way too still on a stained mattress, the silence of death echoing around the dilapidated room they occupied, feeling his heart shattering within his aching chest. He searched his brother's wounded face and knew that nothing he said would convince San to leave him.

"Use my shirt," he said, pain turning his voice hollow. "Tear up the sleeves and make a bandage. Help me get my jacket on."

"It's soaked," Sam protested, looking momentarily stunned that Dean was offering actual constructive instructions.

"So are we," Dean pointed out.

Nodding, Sam pushed to his knees and helped to ease Dean from his outer shirt, pausing when Dean cursed weakly in protest at the jostling of his broken wrist. By the time they'd pulled his shirt free, the waterfall from the top of the cavern had played out and the river had slowed to a merely trickle of left-over water. The inside of the cavern chilled as the sun slid once more behind clouds and Dean knew he'd have to work quickly to get Sam out of there.

"Think the bleeding has stopped," Sam said, wringing out the wet, bloody socks to replace the bandage. "Sort of."

"Just— _ahh_!" Dean's vision whited out for a moment when Sam pressed the bandage in place, his forearm jostling the damaged rib cage. "T-tie it in place…."

"Jesus, Dean, you're _really_ pale, man."

"Bad lighting," Dean gasped, shivering with cold and pain. "Just tie it."

Sam coughed, and tossed a look over his shoulder at the wet remains of their fire.

"F-forget it," Dean breathed. "Nothing dry left to b-burn."

Sam frowned, tying the make-shift bandage in place. "That's what I first remembered," he said. "Burning."

Dean drew his brows over the bridge of his nose. "What?"

Sam looked up at him. "When I came out of that…that water in the tunnel, I…." He shook his head, his lips pressing tight as he worked to hold back his emotion. "I remembered burning. In…in the Cage."

"Sammy…."

"You ever wonder why… _how_ I survived that Cage? My soul, I mean."

"Hey, listen to me. Sam? I mean it." Dean reached out once more and grabbed Sam's jacket, drawing his brother's eyes, forcing himself not to think about those months when Sam had been without his soul, moving, acting, talking like Sam but _nothing_ like the man before him now. "You survived because the fire inside of you burned brighter than the fire around you."

Sam flinched away from the compliment, his brows pulling close, eyes darting away. He reached for Dean's jacket, not saying a word as he eased Dean's left arm in first, then with aching slowness slid the right sleeve over Dean's broken wrist. Once on, Sam buttoned the front closed, offering an additional brace if not warmth.

"Tie a stick to the end of that rope," Dean ordered.

"What for?"

"You're gonna throw it up through the opening. Make it a good one – one that could hold your weight."

"Yeah, okay," Sam nodded, pushing to his feet. "I'm with you."

Dean tried not to wince when Sam had to pause to cough, just held his broken arm close to his wounded side as his brother moved around the gray light of the cavern.

"What do you think Bobby would say about us being stuck in this cave, huh?" Sam asked, his voice echoing against the empty space.

"That we're idjits for not having an escape plan," Dean answered honestly. "I still can't believe I let Larkin cuff us together."

"He was going to cuff me," Sam said, suddenly pulling up short in his search and looking over at Dean from across the wet surface of the cave floor. "You remember? I made him nervous."

"I remember," Dean nodded. His vision began to waver as he kept his eyes on Sam. The shadows seemed to grow, closing in around the lanky figure of his brother.

"He was going to cuff me and make you lead him to the…the lair," Sam grabbed a stick and tried to break it against his leg. It splintered and he tossed it away, moving toward another candidate. "Having one of us out of commission like that would have screwed us royally, so," he shrugged, nodding when the next stick didn't break and headed back toward Dean. "You pretty much did the only thing you—hey, hey, hey, Dean!"

He heard Sam's voice, but it had become impossible to keep his eyes open.

"'m here."

"Open your eyes, man."

He could feel Sam's hands on his face.

"Tired," he managed. He was physically unable to say more.

"C'mon, Dean." Sam's voice turned pleading. "Don't do this. We are getting out of here, okay?"

"'kay," Dean whispered, letting his head rest in the hollow of Sam's warm hand, soaking up the heat he felt there into his chilled body.

Sam would get them out. He'd climb up that rope and go get help and they'd keep going, keep hunting, keep fighting that damn good fight until…. What? Until they were dead or all the evil in the world was gone?

How could they possibly rid the world of evil when there were still people in it?

He didn't register the moment he'd slipped from awareness to hide behind unconsciousness, but he was suddenly swimming through screams, seeing Crowley smirk and Ruby wield a large-bladed knife; he was shooting a man in the head with the Colt, watching his own eyes turn black in a mirror.

Demons, he knew, were born of people, their darkness left untended by the light and allowed to grow, fester, poisoning their souls and until they in turn poisoned humanity.

What did he expect to accomplish? The good fight would never end, and he had so much darkness in him…so much that he'd brought it into the world in a great storm cloud, chewing through the land intent on ending everything. She was here and it was his fault…his darkness called her and his darkness kept her….

"…that's it, there you go."

Sam's voice was suddenly back, like a radio dial had been tuned in his head, bringing his brother back to him.

"You with me, Dean?"

"'s dark," Dean managed.

"You keep saying that," Sam informed him, "but there's still light in here, man. Open your eyes and see for yourself."

Dean blinked, seeing the sloping shadows of sunlight paint the interior of the cavern. He realized that he was no longer slumped against the cave wall, but was lying stretched on his back, his jacket opened and the rest of his flannel shirt folded up like a brace against his wounded side. He was also nearly dry.

"How long was I out?" he whispered.

"Long enough to scare me to death," Sam replied. He was crouched, balancing on the balls of his feet, near Dean's head. "Think you could drink some water?"

Dean nodded and allowed Sam to tip his head up and ease the mouth of the flask against his lips. He drank first, then asked, "Holy Water?"

"Beggars and choosers," Sam shrugged. "So get this..."

"You found an elevator to the top?" Dean guessed, trying to decide if he should try to sit up, or just lay there and breathe.

"Better," Sam grinned. "Cops."

Dean looked at him, surprised. "What?"

"You passed out and I…, you weren't waking up, Dean. And I kinda…I lost it a little bit but…then I heard some guy yell down through the crack in the roof," Sam told him. "There's a half dozen guys up there right now rigging up harnesses to get us out of here."

Dean blinked. "Didn't see that coming."

Sam was nodding, his grin infectious. "They're from town. Turns out they were about to pull together a search party for Larkin when the deputy got a call telling him to get climbing gear and head to the Vespertilio Caverns."

"Wait…," Dean heaved himself up on his good elbow. "Who called them?"

Sam's grin widened. "It had to be Cas."

"How would he—"

"I prayed, man. I told you, someone is listening to us!"

Dean felt his frown pull at the cuts on his face. "Sam—"

"No," Sam cut his hand through the air decisively. "I don't want to hear it, Dean. Those guys had _no idea_ where to go until they got that call and the _only_ person who knew where we were going was Larkin and, well…." Sam gestured toward the other side of the cavern where Dean knew the bodies lay. "Cas couldn't get here, but he _heard me_."

Dean closed his eyes and tried to breathe, ignoring the tightness in his chest, the burn at his side. Something shook inside of him, tripping up his heart and scooping out his lungs. He tasted copper at the back of his throat; it felt like his lungs were heavy and full of fluid.

Getting out of the cave only solved one problem. If Cas wasn't there when they got out….

"Don't."

"What?" Dean blinked his eyes open and looked at his brother, taking in how tired and hurt and damn _young_ Sam looked in that moment.

"Don't start thinking that it doesn't matter if you get out. You've survived a helluva lot worse than this."

Dean slid his eyes away. Should he? After all he'd done…after what he'd released into the world…did he have a _right_ to survive?

"You didn't let it out," Sam said, as though reading his mind. "I did."

"Sam—"

"No, stop." Sam pushed to his feet, running a hand through his hair and rubbing at the back of his neck. Dean had to shift his head to keep Sam in focus. "You told me not to. You were going to…to lock yourself away, Mark of Cain and all. And I…," he glanced back at Dean, a familiar expression on his face, "I couldn't live with you dead."

Dean closed his eyes, his breath catching at the base of his throat.

"So I let it out. To save you." He looked down at Dean and smiled. "And I…I don't regret it. Not one second."

"That darkness, Sam," Dean tried. "It's…it was _in me_."

Sam's smile softened. "There's light and dark in all of us, Dean. We just have to feed the right wolf."

Dean swallowed. "Always were…too smart for…your own good."

Sam's dimples buried deep into his cheeks just as four ropes dropped down through the opening.

A voice called down and Sam stepped away, both brothers watching as men slid effortlessly down into the cave. Dean closed his eyes, letting Sam do the talking. He felt every one of his muscles, every bone filled with something leaden and cold, every blood vessel covered in barbed wire as it slide through his body.

He knew he needed to stay conscious, but it was too hard to stay engaged.

So instead, he listened as Sam explained about the creature and pointed out where Larkin's and the other victim's bodies were located. He listened as their rescuers debated on the best way to get both wounded men up and out of the cavern. He listened as someone was ordered back to town to get help, remembering all-too well the four mile trek back to the trail head.

"Dean?"

"'m here," he replied, responding instinctively to Sam's voice.

"They're gonna put a couple harnesses on you, okay?" Sam told him. "Lift you out of here so you don't have to climb."

Yeah, because _that_ would have been possible.

"Awesome," Dean replied, not opening his eyes. He wasn't sure he'd be able to stay on this crazy spinning world of theirs if he attempted something as irrational as sight.

"You stay with me, okay?"

"'kay, Sammy," Dean whispered, shivering slightly as Sam fastened his jacket once more.

He heard strange voices getting close, felt straps from the harness slide beneath his head and shoulders, and another set beneath his back and rear. He almost asked if Sam was going to have to climb but then he was lifted and his bones turned into lava and the scream of pain scraped his throat raw and there was suddenly nothing.

No memories, no pain, no cave, no Sam.

The enticing scent of pine drew him back to the surface. It took him a moment to realize he was still lying down, but now he could feel himself swinging slightly, as though he were laying in a hammock.

"Sam?" His voice was wrecked; if he hadn't felt the vibration in his chest, he wouldn't have believed it had come from him.

"Hey! Hey, there you are."

Sam's voice was immediate and close. Dean blinked his eyes open and realized he was staring up at trees, the encroaching night pulling the clouds away to reveal hundreds of stars between the tops of the Evergreens. Sam was leaning heavily on something—or someone—his face shadowed.

"Why am I…swinging?"

"It's okay," Sam reassured him. "They pulled us out of the cave and rigged up a kind of a travois for you."

If he turned his head he could see poles inserted through the straps of the harness that had been used to haul him out of the cave.

"You okay?"

Sam paused long enough that Dean knew his brother was cloaking his pain. "I've…been better."

"You have to climb?" It was bothering him, the thought that he was carried out while Sam had to climb.

"No, they hauled me out, too," Sam reassured him, coughing briefly, the man who supported him adjusting his grip.

"They get Larkin?" Dean whispered the question, feeling once more the swoop in his belly that sent his head spinning much like it had looking over that ledge in the depths of the cave. If felt like the world was slipping further away from him.

"Yeah," Sam nodded, then frowned down at him, something unreadable in his expression. "We're almost back to the trail head. Just hang in there, okay?"

They were almost back to the trail head and a hospital and questions and no possible way to reach Cas. Dean closed his eyes, pressing his left hand against his wounded side and felt the wetness there. Their rescuers got them out of the cave, but had clearly not been equipped to deal with wounds delivered by a giant cave demon.

He tried to figure out how to tell Sam he wasn't going to make it out of this one. He had to find a way to convince his brother that it _had to be_ okay to go on without him this time. No deals, no plea bargains, no coming after him…no angels, no demons, no Heaven, no Hell.

Nothing.

After a lifetime of fighting, Dean Winchester was heading to oblivion. And the odd part was, he could actually accept that fact if he knew Sam would be okay here without him.

"Dean?"

"'m here," Dean reassured his brother. "Just…thinking."

"Yeah, well, based on that frown it's nothing good."

 _The really good stuff? Has nothing to do with our jobs. It's just…it's us._

He suddenly knew he didn't have to tell Sam. His brother would find out soon enough. And there was no reason to spend whatever time his body gave him before it decided enough was enough filling Sam with fear and dread.

His brother lived that reality enough as it was.

"I remember the good stuff, Sammy," he whispered, not caring that six strangers walked among them, listening to every word, not understanding one. "I remember…us."

Sam pulled away from the man supporting him, wrapped his arms wrapped around his torso and angled his head to watch both Dean and the ground he stumbled across. Dean noticed their nameless, faceless rescuer didn't stray too far from Sam, and for that he was grateful.

"Yeah? Like what?" Sam pressed.

"Like…teaching you how to drive," Dean revealed. "Which…which was way w-worse than teaching you…to ride a bike."

"No it wasn't," Sam scoffed, chuckling.

"So much worse," Dean said, closing his eyes against a wave of pain that swept up from the wound on his side. He tried to bite back a groan, but one stole his breath anyway. Before anyone could move to help him, though, he forced himself to continue, to focus on the memory, to keep Sam engaged.

"F-for one, you argued with…with everything I said—"

"I did not!"

Dean smiled as one of the men hauling the travois down the path chuffed a quick laugh.

"You hadn't hit…your growth spurt, s-so you could barely reach the peddles…the Impala was just…it was a lot of car for a skinny k-kid like you," Dean said. "Dad was, uh…hunting, and I t-took you out to this back road in…um—"

"Colorado Springs," Sam supplied, and Dean heard the soft smile there.

"Yeah, that's right," Dean smiled, then gasped as the path grew rough. "Oh, fuck, this hurts," he gasped, holding his body together with his left arm.

"Hang in there," the man pulling his travois entreated.

"Dean—"

"You were scared to death," Dean made himself go on, "but…but you weren't gonna let me see it, no way. So, I, uh…I put in—"

"Metallica," Sam recalled, and Dean heard the choke of emotion in his brother's voice. " _Ride the Lightning_."

"Yeah, and told you j-just to focus on the drums—"

"Which were buried beneath the loudest guitar riff ever."

"And you were so intent on the d-drums, you forgot…you forgot to be scared," Dean continued. "And you…you were a natural, man. Drove those mountain roads like…like you'd been doin' it all your…all your life."

"You let me drive home," Sam said, smiling. "And you fell asleep."

"Trusted you, Sammy," Dean whispered, completely spent. "Knew you'd…be okay…on your own."

"I was only okay because you were next to me," Sam said quietly.

Dean didn't reply, letting the memories slide over him in the starlight. The sight of Sam sitting next to him as the Impala traversed mile after mile. The sound of his brother breathing in a dark motel room, even and steady and the only constant in a world of chaos. The knowledge that there was one person still left in the world who cared where he was, if he was alive, if he was happy.

"We're here, boys," called a voice Dean didn't recognize.

He could see the flash of white and red lights from the ambulance dancing across the tops of the trees and turning the starlit sky to pitch. Voices began to echo around him and he suddenly, desperately wanted to be on his feet, but the moment he tried to sit forward his ribs screamed at him.

Or…maybe that was _him_ screaming because Sam's face came into view rather quickly and he felt his brother's hand gripping his tightly. Before he could say a word, he was lifted from the harness travois and laid on a waiting stretcher. Someone shone a light in his eyes, another stretched straps over his legs. He could see an oxygen mask descending and felt strange hands on his side, peeling away the sodden, make-shift bandage.

"Sam!"Desperation fueled his voice.

"Right here, man," Sam reassured him, reminding Dean that his brother still gripped his hand.

The stretcher was lifted into the back of the ambulance, Sam climbing in beside him, and another man in a white shirt wearing a blue ball cap climbed in after Sam and closed the doors behind him. Dean braced himself for the inevitable exam, the needles, the pronouncement that he was worse off than the town's clinic could handle, but the man in the ball cap moved past his stretcher and slid into the driver's seat.

Without a word to either of them, the man flicked on the siren. Dean tugged the oxygen mask off his face, feeling claustrophobic. He shot a worried glance at Sam when the driver took off, trying to remember the last time he'd seen Crowley, who they might have pissed off, how they could fight this apparent kidnapper as thrashed as they were.

He didn't register the ragged, choked sound of his own breathing until Sam started to reach for the oxygen mask. He could taste blood on his lips and see it on his fingertips as he reached a trembling hand to grasp Sam's wrist and stop him.

"Dean, you need to remain conscious."

He blinked, this time his shared glance with Sam filled with shock.

"Cas?!"

"I will turn off the siren once we have passed the town and then we will return under cover of night for your car," Castiel continued.

"Cas, how the hell—" Sam started.

"I heard you," Castiel interrupted. "You were quite insistent. And with good reason, evidently."

"You… _heard_ him?" Dean asked, trying to twist around to see Castiel and crying out when the pain seared his torso.

"Easy, Dean," Sam soothed, pulling the oxygen mask off and setting it aside, apparently realizing that Dean was not going to cooperate. "Just hang on a little bit longer."

"S-shit, Sam…," Dean whispered, "…this h-hurts." He closed his eyes against the rising nausea as his body began to shiver in earnest.

"Cas, you need to pull over somewhere, man," Sam called. Dean felt his brother's hand in his once more. "He's looking bad."

"We need to get further away or else we risk being overtaken."

Dean felt his heart slam, hard and fast as though he were running a marathon. His head pounded, his hand shook in Sam's grip, and he was cold, icy, _frigid_ cold.

"His lips are white," Sam shouted up front to Cas. "I'm not kidding, Cas. Get the hell back here or you came all this way for nothing!"

He knew Sam was right, had known it since the creature's talons wrapped around him, but there was still something completely terrifying about the inevitability of death coming to pass. He swallowed hard, his mouth dry, his throat flooded with the coppery taste of blood. He pressed his head back against the stretcher as he felt something flare, hot and sharp inside of him.

A scream climbed up from his gut but he couldn't do more than groan, suddenly overwhelmed by the memory of the Reaper and the weakness that swept his body, the Hellhounds and the fire that tore him apart, the gunshot that destroyed his heart, the angel sword that empty his body of blood.

So many deaths, so much pain, and he was afraid.

He was _afraid_ this time.

"S-sc-scared, Sam." His voice was no more than a hope of sound, but his brother heard him. His brother always heard him.

" _Cas!_ " Sam's bellow was terrible, his anger a tangible thing.

The siren abruptly cut off and Dean felt the vehicle shift alarmingly to the right, sending Sam tumbling across him. When the ambulance jerked to a halt, Sam crashed against the front wall, then scrambled to his feet to peer down at him just as Dean felt his body convulse, the blood that had been choking him spilling up through his mouth and painting his chin and neck as he coughed violently.

"Move." Castiel's voice was firm, the angel's lack of panic calming Dean like nothing else.

He lost sight of Sam, the hand that had been gripping his jerked roughly away. His eyes fell closed, his body shook; a voice in the back of his mind whispered _this is it_. He was choking and suffocating and _holy_ _shit_ his ribs—

And then suddenly…warmth. Quiet, calm, darkness, peace.

It flooded him, sweeping through him from the touch of fingertips at his forehead to his trembling legs. He felt the cuts on his face fill and mend, the ache in his broken wrist evaporate, the sensation of being crushed from the inside out by his own bones erased. The burning wound in his side closed and he felt a rush of strength shiver through his limbs as his blood regenerated, easing the panicked pumping of his heart.

For several heartbeats, he was weightless, floating in the empty space between pain and healing, unable to open his eyes, to speak, to little more than breathe and feel his heart beating. But…Sam had been hurt. Sam was sick. He needed to—

"Lie still," Castiel admonished, his hand pressing gently on Dean's chest, keeping him down. "I've repaired you, but the damage was…severe."

Dean obeyed, needing a moment to wrap his mind around the lack of pain, the delicious ability to draw a full breath. He suddenly realized after the flood of memories of near-misses, damage, and death that he never again wanted to know what it was like to hunt without an angel as their best friend.

Castiel was quite literally the primary reason either of them were still alive.

"Fix Sam," he whispered after several minutes, not quite able yet to open his eyes.

"I'm okay, Dean," Sam reassured him. "He, uh…got me."

Dean blinked blearily up at the roof of the ambulance. Then he pushed up to his elbows on the stretcher, his legs still strapped down, and looked over at his brother, needing to see for himself that Sam no longer bore the scrapes and wounds from the Olitiau fight. Sam smiled at him, looking as fit and healthy as the last time Castiel healed him.

"Your cough?" Dean asked, relieved to hear his voice returned to his normal timbre.

"Not even a tickle," Sam promised, reaching down to unstrap Dean's legs. "I'm okay."

Dean swung his legs over the side of the stretcher, staring in amazement at Castiel, the angel nearly unrecognizable in the white EMT shirt and blue cap. "What the hell got into you?"

Castiel tilted his head, his blue eyes guileless. "I assure you I have not been compromised."

"He means…how'd you know how pull this off?" Sam waved a hand around the interior of the ambulance.

"There is an amazing wealth of knowledge on Netflix," Castiel replied, blinking innocently at Sam. "For example, karma is apparently a bit—"

"Cas," Dean interrupted. "Thank you, man. Seriously." He raised a hand in promise. "I will never mock _Orange is the New Black_ again."

"Wait, so let me get this straight," Sam half turned to face Castiel. "You…sent a rescue party, stole a car, and managed to coordinate an ambulance heist all from watching shows on Netflix?"

"Not exactly," Castiel tipped his head. "The rescue party was common sense, and your brother taught me how to steal a car."

Dean held his hands up in surrender as Sam shot him a _this is why we can't have nice things_ look.

"But as far as the heist…yes, that would be correct."

"And we are damn glad you did," Dean clapped a hand on Castiel's knee. "Aren't we, Sammy?"

Sam huffed a helpless laugh. "Yeah, we are. Thank you, Cas. Thanks for…listening."

"Your prayers are hard to ignore," Castiel remarked, shrugging. He moved past them and opened the back of the ambulance. "I'm afraid, however, we did not make it to where I stashed the car."

Dean grinned as Sam mouthed _stashed the car_ at him. "How far are we?"

"We are half-way between the Impala and the stolen vehicle."

"So…let's walk back to the Impala," Dean said, wrinkling his nose as he pulled the make-shift bandage away from his side, the blood having dried there and stiffened the material.

He climbed from the ambulance, carrying the scraps of clothing with him so that he didn't leave blatant DNA evidence behind, and waited as Sam jumped down next to him. Though clearly healed, his body still felt a bit suspended, his legs rubbery. He took a deep breath, relishing the feel of expanding his lungs.

"Us not showing up at the hospital is going to raise suspicion right away," Sam cautioned.

"Naturally," Dean glanced at him, grimacing at the mess of blood and cave dirt caking Sam's clothes. He looked down at himself; he looked like he'd survived a zombie attack.

"And we're the only ones who can really explain what happened to Larkin," Sam continued. "We disappear now…they're gonna probably pin his death on us."

Dean nodded attempting to pull his tattered T-shirt closed, then gave up and just re-buttoned his jacket.

"Gonna have to burn these IDs," Sam sighed, looking at his FBI badge before stuffing it into his jean's pocket once more. "Goodbye Agents Stark and Banner."

Dean simply stared at him, waiting for him to land his plane.

"So…we're walking?" Sam sighed and rested his hands on his hips, swiveling his glance between Dean and Castiel.

"Gotta get back to my baby before they decide to tow her," Dean nodded. "And get our clothes from the hotel; we don't have a lot of wardrobe options, y'know."

He turned toward the road where Castiel had pulled off to save his life and lead the way back to the lot where the Impala waited. He delight in the way his body obeyed him. The lack of pain was intoxicating. He almost wanted to run back to the car.

"I am afraid I don't know the reason you were in such dire straits," Castiel confessed. "I haven't really been…myself lately. I did not pay close attention when you left the bunker."

"We were hunting the King Kong of bats," Dean replied.

"An Olitiau," Sam corrected.

"Ah, a cave demon," Castiel nodded. "They are quite rare. In fact, I'm surprised to learn that one was this far north. They are typically found in—"

"Yeah, we did the research," Sam broke in. "And believe me, I was not excited about this one _at all_."

"You were when you thought it was a serial killer," Dean commented. He bounced his head in concession. "But not so much when we had to rappel down into a cave."

"It had killed several people and," Sam sighed, "Dean was right. We had to do something."

"It would have gone dormant once it completed its lunar feeding cycle," Castiel informed them. "They are much easier to kill when dormant."

Dean shot Sam a glance. "Now he tells us."

"I would have told you before had you asked," Castiel replied.

"You were there when we needed you," Dean dropped back from the lead and rested a hand on Castiel's shoulder. "That's what matters."

They walked in silence for several minutes, then Cas asked, "How did you avoid the amnesiatic qualities of the saliva?"

"We didn't," Sam replied. "We had to…wash it off. Kinda."

Castiel stopped abruptly, causing both brothers to slow and turn, facing him in the starlit night, the waxing moon partially covered by clouds and tossing shadows across their features.

"So you experienced the memory surge," Castiel realized.

The brothers nodded, waiting.

"How remarkable." Castiel tilted his head, then continued walking.

"What, Cas?" Dean asked, hurrying to catch up. Sam flanked the angel on the opposite side. "What's remarkable?"

"Considering your souls have survived multiple lifetimes between Hell, Lucifer's Cage, Purgatory, dying and returning a demon…it's remarkable that you stand here completely sane after surging through the amount of memories you've accumulated."

Dean slowed to a stop, watching as Sam followed suit a few beats later, Castiel carrying forward down the road for a moment before he realized his companions had dropped back. Dean waited until Sam turned around.

"I saw it all," he said, feeling a shiver slide through him as the words hit the air.

Sam nodded, his eyes large and dark in the starlight. "Me too."

"The rack and the blood and Alistair—"

"—Lucifer turning the Cage into his personal playground—" Sam took a step toward him.

"I saw Mom and Dad when I went back in time—"

"—me too, and Dad's spirit at the graveyard in Wyoming—"

Dean curled his hands into fists, his back tensing. "—and the djinn world where you were with Jess and Mom was alive."

"I saw the Campbells," Sam continued, closing in. "And Death putting my soul back in my body."

"I saw Cas when he thought he was God and beat the hell out of me."

"I saw us burning Dad's body—"

"—and ending Bobby's ghost."

They stood quietly for a moment, studying each other, eyes darting as they searched for cracks in the glass, both slightly breathless with confession.

"I'm still me, Sam." Dean stepped forward, attempting to uncurl his fists with concentrated effort.

"Same here, Dean."

Sam's arms were around him before he could say _I know_ , hugging him breathless as he pressed his fists against his brother's broad back and returned the sentiment. When they parted, Sam was smiling, his eyes bright. Dean sniffed and dragged a hand down his face, then looked at Castiel.

"If we could be considered sane before," he said, "then I guess we're sane now."

Castiel simply nodded, then continued to walk down the road toward the Impala. "It was probably the cave," he said, nonchalance coloring his tone. "The minerals in the earth possibly dampened the effects of the demon's poison and helped you retain your grasp on reality."

Sam shared a look of bafflement with Dean, then called out to Castiel, "Is that…typical?"

"No idea," Castiel waved his hands at his sides in an expressive shrug. "But then, you never really were typical humans."

Sam huffed. Dean grinned, laughter simmered up from inside, spilling out like bubbles into the night air. Sam echoed it and they chuckled softly as they headed toward the car. When they reached the trailhead, they hid in the trees until they were sure the rescue party had departed, leaving the Impala untouched.

Dean climbed behind the wheel with a sigh, caressing the wheel with gratitude.

"Damn glad to see you," he whispered to the dash.

"You need a minute alone?" Sam teased.

"Maybe later," Dean bounced a brow in Sam's direction, then checked on Castiel in the back seat via the rear view mirror before turning over the engine and sinking deeper into the seat as the machine purred around him.

"We are swearing off monsters for a while," Sam sighed, settling against the passenger door as Dean pulled away from the trailhead and pointed the car toward the hotel and Kansas. "Especially giant ones who live in caves."

"Tell you what," Dean offered, reaching over to shove Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti into the cassette player. "You pick the next hunt."

"And you'll go? No questions asked?"

"I'll pack your bag for you," Dean held up his hand as a promise, then bounced his fingers against the steering wheel in time to _Trampled Under Foot_.

Sam grinned.

From the backseat, Castiel muttered, "I may need to expand my Netflix queue."

* * *

 **a/n** : So, there you go; just a story…an excuse for some h/c and a walk down memory lane and a personal desire to spend a little time with these guys again after a lengthy absence. I'm heading back to Paris and the world of _The Musketeers_ next, but I do hope you enjoyed this. As I said at the beginning, it was written to do nothing more than entertain; hopefully for a few of you, it accomplished its purpose.

Thanks, as always, for reading.


End file.
